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

Evaluation Task Six: What have you learn about technologies from the process of constructing your product?

To complete this task, we decided to place detailed annotations on our YouTube video. If the annotations are not showing up, there is a button that looks like a speech bubble that you can click.

Evaluation Task Five: How did you attract/address your audience?

 After our research into what our target audience would be, and through interviewing a wide range of ages between the two genders, we discovered that our main target audience would be male 15-20. Our research also suggested that older males in the 21-39 age category would also be our sub-target audience.

We found out that a lot of what this category was expecting from our thriller was suspense. Many of our shots in our thriller build suspense, for example this one:

This is an example this shot is foreshadowing the unexpected arrival of our 'killer.' This attracted the audience because it built up suspense and made them question who this unnamed and mysterious figure is. This is the sort of thing our target audience asked to see. This close-up of the 'killers' foot creates dramatic irony for the audience which is a technique that is used in many thrillers and a technique that the audience should be used to if they watch a lot of thrillers,  and therefore appeals to our target audience as it is a fairly normal shot.

Another type of shot that appeals to our target audience are shots that give hints to the viewer about what the film may be about. An example of this is:

When we asked our target audience what they would like in our thriller, a popular answer was the spy/political element of our thriller. Therefore, this over-the-shoulder shot appeals and attracts the audience as it shows a confidential document which offers intrigue to the audience and makes them want to know what the rest of the film is about.

One shot that is common in many thrillers is the shot where you see one of the main characters' wedding ring which appeals to the audience because it tells them a little bit more about the character. An example of this in our thriller is:

This close-up shot appeals and attracts our target audience because although it is a simple shot, it tells a lot about what is to come and foreshadows events that may effect the family that we have been told he has by this shot of his wedding ring. This sort of shot occurs in films such as 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' which is a Bond film. Our target audience have mentioned that our thriller seems very similar to a James Bond style of film and therefore, if this shot is similar to one in a Bond film, it would definitely appeal to our target audience.

Overall, our thriller appeals and attracts to our target audience because many of our shots create suspense and tension which is something that our audience wanted from our film. We attracted our audience by filling the niche of foreshadowing and creating tension through intriguing close up shots.

Evaluation Task Four: What is your target audience for your product?

After some group discussion. we decided that our thriller would be of certificate 15 in the UK as it contains extreme violence and bad language.

Recently, I have been doing some surveys by filming various age groups and asking them questions relating to the thriller genre and specifically about my thriller idea. There are three age categories: 15-20, 21-39 and 40+. All of these categories have a male and a female constituent. Here are the interviews:

Boy 15-20

Here, I interviewed Brandon, who fits in the 15-20 age category. His answers were fairly typical for someone his age, and this gives us evidence that this age group enjoys thrillers and would enjoy watching a spy/political thriller. It also tells us that this category are looking for suspense when watching a thriller but also a good storyline.



My second interview was with Jonny, who also fits into this age category. Stereotypically, his answers matched up pretty well with Brandon's, as they both talked about high-action thrillers as their favourite. This age category would like our film as it contains a lot of action and fast-paced sequences which is exampled by these two interviews.

15-20 Girls

 

This is Agata, who started off our research into the 15-20 girls category. Unusually for teenage girls, Agata preferred action movies and thrillers that contained suspense and 'on the edge of your seat' moments. This is an interesting observation as you would not think girls would like this type of film stereotypically. She also said she would like to see our film, giving us evidence that she enjoys these types of films.

 

Mimi was actually quite similar to Agata in the way that they would both enjoy our film. However, Mimi said that her favourite genre of film was comedy, which could be problematic as our thriller idea contains little to no comedy. A common theme running throughout all of the interviews so far is the want of suspense within a thriller movie, which is something we hope to achieve.

 

18-39 Men

 

 

 

Stereotypically age range, Tom said he liked thrillers and seemed to know what he was talking about film-wise. He is a media student and gave me a great insight into the average students' perspective on thrillers. Like many of the people we interviewed, Tom thought that our thriller sounded a bit too much like a James Bond film which is something we should have to tweak.

 

 

 

Paul fits into the 18-39 men category and is a media teacher at my college. Previously in this category, we have had a positive reaction to our thriller idea and this interview fits into that stereotype. Many people take the genre 'thriller' into many different styles, some thinking it is just horror, but some thinking it films like the Bourne series. In fact, all of these films fall into the thriller genre and Paul's answer matched the answers we were hoping for perfectly.

 

 18-39 Women

 



 

Contrary to popular assumption, I found that women in this age category were highly interested in our action/spy/political thriller concept/idea, as exampled by Olivia in this video. She even stated that her favourite genre of film was action, breaking the stereotype of this age group and making her a member of our target audience.

 

 

I decided to interview Monika, who originally comes from Poland to see what this constituent would add to our survey. Also, surprisingly to me, she said she would watch our film, hinting to our research that our film may be a bit 'soft' to be a thriller, and maybe too similar to other franchises. However, she could be in our target audience as we are given the impression she would see our thriller film.

 

40+ Men

 

 

The first person I interviewed in this age category was Simon, a media teacher at my college. Firstly, I assumed that as Simon was of the older side of the spectrum, he would find our film too fast paced and edgy. However, it turned out he knew a lot about thrillers and films in general and showed an interest in our film. A constant piece of information I received was that our film is very similar, causing us to doubt our idea and look for improvements to the storyline. So far, our idea has generally had a positive reaction.

 

In this interview, I made sure that the strong point of selling my idea was the political side of our thriller, which I assumed a man of Bob's age would prefer to something like car chases and assassinations. This proved correct as Bob didn't actually want to stop talking about how interested he was in the project, making us think even more so that our thriller is as family-friendly as thrillers can get.

 

40+ Women

 

 

And here is my mum, I know you've been waiting for it! Stereotypically of the older woman, she prefers romantic comedies as her genre of film choice so I was not expecting the answer I received when she said yes to wanting to see our film. However, I feel she was under the impression that every film has a love story in it an we were not assuming our thriller had anything of the sort, therefore ruling her out of our target audience.

 

 

And last but not least, I interviewed my mums colleague, Maria. After having interviewed one 40+ women, I was under the impression that most answers would be the same for the same age group but was eventually proved wrong. Maria had multiple choices for her favourite thriller, however they were all in different categories of thriller making me think that she does not watch them very often and only likes a few.

 

Overall, after much research and surveying about our target audience, I have reached the conclusion of the male audience being our target, more specifically the younger men. This is because I received a clean sweep of similar answers from all of these men, convincing me that this was the right choice for our target audience. This was, of course, our guess from the beginning as we followed the stereotype. However, it did make us think about what genre of film we were making, and prompted us to rethink exactly what happens in the film to make it less family-friendly and a film that is worthy of certificate 15 in cinemas.

 

 

 

 

 

 





Evaluation Task Three: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Firstly, our production had no budget so to the viewer, our opening title sequence Target, would seem to have been made by a small, independent British company. However, we believe our product and our idea has the potential to have a blockbuster budget and could be made by a huge Hollywood company because the story involves many key themes and ideas that would take a likeness to big films around today.

I did some research into spy/political thrillers to see what sort of production company would fund our idea of a massive oil baron being murdered by a spy activist. I looked into these types of films and discovered that the Bourne series showed a likeness to our genre of movie. These films were produced by multiple big name companies such as Universal Pictures, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Hypnotic, Kallima Productions and Stillking Films. These companies would suit our film as our story has the potential to be a franchise, like the Bourne series which has four films. A common occurrence in the US  is a multiple of production companies working on one film, whereas in Britain, most films are made using one company, like Monsters that was made by Vertigo Films.

However, our story also has the potential to be made by a British independent company such as the BBC who created the TV mini-series State of Play on a fairly low budget but was still successful. Our idea is suited to this also because our production might appeal more to a British audience, as it might not sell to the big budget American audience. In contradiction to this, State of Play was bought out by the American companies Universal Pictures, Studio Canal, Working Title Films, Relativity Media and Andell Entertainment. This film contained big budget stars such as Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck, showing us that big American conglomerates do not like downgrading products, only making them bigger. This shows that our film could mould between the two areas of film distribution, depending on whichever type of film we chose to make. If we were to make our film with a British, independent company, it would most likely turn out as a TV mini-series as that is what sells in this environment.

 

After doing some more research, I found a film that is very similar to our concept that was made by Warner Bros. This film is called Syriana and stars George Clooney in a film about political war over oil and fuels. This shows us that our film definitely does have the potential to be a Hollywood as Syriana proves it. This film also includes an assassination, which is normally something that only happens in big budget films. This film is directed by Stephen Gaghan who is someone we would like to direct our film as he has experience in this genre of film. A quote from him says: "When 9/11 happened, it suddenly was a war on terror, which I think of as a war on emotions. It all started to click for me". This is a concept that we wholly agree with, as Gaghan focuses on the American reliance on foreign oil, which is a big theme in our film.

Overall, many different types of company, from British independent to Hollywood conglomerate, I believe would be interested in distributing our idea because the concept is so malleable to different audiences. Our story has a relevance to various countries and societies, even places where the oil comes from would be interested in our film. Our movie has the potential to be an international political/spy thriller due to the potential complexity of our idea and it's general storyline being impactful for audiences who do not know about the problems with foreign oil everywhere. In order to make this film the best it can be, we would have to do more research into facts and figures of our potential audiences and companies.











 

Evaluation Task Two: How does your product represent particular social groups?

As our task only had two characters, not many stereotypical social groups were represented on mass. However, within our two characters, strong stereotypes are represented using costume and mis-en-scene even though our budget did not match the scale of our film.

Firstly, our first character was the 'killer' As he was undercover, and breaking in to someone's house, we decided to follow the stereotype of wearing all black, with a black hat over his hair. We also only shot this character from the back, creating suspense and also hiding the fact that it was a seventeen year old student who was a member of our group. If we had a bigger budget, we would have kept the costume fairly similar, as all black is the standard clothing for an 'assassin.' However, we would have hired someone who was older, a bit taller (6 foot and over) and picked someone who looked rougher and tougher. The clues we give the audience that this character is in a 'shady' social group, and one that is 'up to no good' were obvious through the fact we had a POV shot of his looking at a house and also a shot of him breaking through the window. This character fit well into the lower-class, 'always wanting more' type of social group.

Our second character was the 'victim', who we have decided is an oil-baron and high class business man, was played by our media teacher. However, if we had a higher budget, this is not the type of person we would have chosen. Our character is late thirties, but is still very slick, with gelled hair and wears suits. Our teacher has a shaved head. We tried to get the idea of our character across through mis-en-scene, by having a close-up of his wedding ring, creating the stereotype of a married man, and then we used a mid-shot of a photograph of Adam (our actor) dressed in a suit, looking very much like a gang-leader. This showed the audience the overall idea of the character.

We chose to film in Adam's house, which looks middle class, modern and fairly large. This fitted the stereotype of a successful businessman as the establishing shots we took of the house created this idea in the audience's heads. We added many things around the house to add to this stereotype, such as business papers on the kitchen table, to show he was a hard-working man and fit into the middle-class social group comfortably.

Overall, I feel like we have created two specific stereotypes of a businessman and an assassin well, considering our budget. However, if we did have a bigger budget, many of our ideas would change, mainly to do with the character of the 'victim' like his hairstyle and stance. Our 'killer' would look older than he does however his costume would stay similar. I felt we achieved the social groups and stereotypes we wanted very well considering we had no budget.

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

Evaluation task one from hurtwoodhousemedia5

Our Opening Title Sequence

Editing Our Opening Title Sequence

Our Final Editing Session

This session included mainly picking the theme music for our opening title sequence. There were many different songs and sound FX that we could choose form. After listening to many different tracks, including some choral pieces which we thought might have an 'impending-doom' effect on the audience.

We tested all of these tracks and eventually went for a more futuristic type of song called 'Satellites.' We then slowed down this track in order to create a slower build up instead of an automatic impact. This we used for the first thirty seconds and then slowly faded into a low booming synth sound in order to make the audience feel suspense and tension. Overall, I am pleased with the way the sound FX turned out.

Our actual titles in the sequence were a bit more tricky as you have to make sure you are within the 'title safe.' This means that if people still have small and old televisions then they can still see all of the names that come up. We chose an old typewriter-like font in order to fit in our stereotype of spies and politics in the old days. We also had to make sure that the titles were up long enough for people to be able to read the name and the job in plenty of time. We also tried to fit the titles in with the rhythm of the music but this turned out to be more difficult than we thought and looked sloppy, so therefore we made the decision to place the titles in different places where it suited them more.

So our opening title sequence is complete! The next thing to do is to do audience research into whether they liked it, whether they thought it was a good thriller etc. Overall, I am happy with the outcome of our thriller as a lot of hard work and effort has gone into it.