7) Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the final product?

This is a video that me and the director made in answer to the question " Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the final product?"

6) What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

http://popplet.com/app/#/4021111

This is a link to the popplet i made to answer the question " What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?"
Below is a screen shot of the popplet should there be any problems with the link.

5) How did you attract/ address your audience?

This is a prezi i created in order to answer the question " How did you attract/ address your audience?"

4) Who would be the audience for your media project?

Evaluation question 4 – Who would be the audience for your media project?

Firstly, our key demographic is teenagers/ young adults. This is because as teenagers/ young adults ourselves we would find it easier to market something that we would watch. Essentially, we know what works on us. Not only is it easier to market but it also makes our film more relatable as the actors are young which could make our film more appealing and understandable to them.

Our film will have a certification of 15, this is because, as said, our target audience is teenagers. However we don’t want to limit the audience so we don’t want our film to be an 18. We feel our thriller we appeal to this generation as it isn't overly aggressive or frightening, but is thrilling enough for teenagers.
 Another thing to point out is the fact that our film only stars men. We may have unintentionally lost a potential audience by having no female characters. On the other hand, this could make it more appealing to male audiences. In addition, men are generally the target audience for thrillers/ action films. Similarly to gender, we didn’t think of race as a factor. This is because we simply chose the best actors in our group. Hopefully this won’t affect the audience too much as there are only two characters anyway.

Additionally, we feel as though British teenagers specifically would be the target as that is what the film is based around making it more relatable for this audience.

Furthermore, we could potentially increase our market audience as we have only done the opening to the film. This could be his first attack and we could include women and different races. Furthermore, we could introduce relatives of the victim to provide interesting story plots, which could appeal to anyone we want it to. Essentially , although now our audience is fairly limited. We could increase this drastically. This is one very good thing about leaving a thriller on a cliffhanger, it means we can go down virtually any route we choose.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media project and why?

This is a powtoon i made in order to answer the question " what kind of media institution might distribute your media project and why?"

2) How does your media project represent particular social groups?

This is a video of me and the director of our media project, sam, answering the question: " How does you media project represent particular social groups?"

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

Our media project uses some of the forms and conventions we have come to expect from thriller films. The first of these conventions being frequent action. Our film doesn't have that much action, rather a dramatic buildup to a climatic conclusion. This is because we have a limited time to film an opening to a film. As it is the opening, we can't have too much action as we needed to focus on the plot and building the suspense. If we were to make a whole movie we would include a lot of action.
The second aspect of a thriller is fast pacing. Fast pacing is used to make the film seem quicker and make it appear so that a lot happens in a vey short space of time. Our thriller opening is fast paced to a certain extent. This is because, again, we decided to focus on the building of suspension and the tension and drama. Another important feature is that the characters are smart and resourceful. Smart and resourceful characters make the plot more dangerous. However, we didn't have enough time to tell the audience that the characters are smart. This is why we decided to use a mask and black clothing to tell the audience quickly that this is a dangerous character who needs to be feared. Furthermore, we made it obvious that the intruder was driven and dedicated to murdering his target by using the collage. This showed planning and precision in choosing the target. The fact we have a driven villain makes it scarier as there is nothing scarier than a villain that has nothing lose. Along with the thriller conventions, there are some added characteristics that make a thriller more interesting. These consist of: a red herring, a cliffhanger and suspense. As stated before, suspense is one of the things we focused the most on. This is because it is what makes the audience feel like they are apart of the film. We included a cliffhanger at the end. This is because we want the audience to feel scared for the protagonist. Furthermore, we want them to feel like they have to keep watching to find out what happens. The last thing to include was a red herring. We chose not to include a red herring because the screen time we had was limited. In hindsight, we would've included someone knocking on the door, or the wind blowing something over that scared the protagonist, this would've, again, added to the suspense of the film and made it eve more dramatic when the villain attacks at the end.

Here is a comparison of the villain in our project and one of the most common villains of all time, Jason. As you can see, the hockey mask is used fairly commonly as a villainous prop. this is because it hides the persons face which adds an era of mystery to the character. It is in fact this mystery which most viewers find scary.

Similarly, the kidnapping itself is reminiscent of a scene in "taken 2" in which the actor gets kidnapped using a bag. Our thriller does this in a more abrupt fashion in order to scare the audience. In the scene in taken it is just used to the character doesn't know how to trace the kidnappers. 

Furthermore, we decided to incorporate the theories of Tzvetan Todorov. This theory suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure, where they begin at the state of equilibrium in which everything is in balance. Then something or someone has to come along to disturb the equilibrium. Finally, the equilibrium must be restored or a new equilibrium is formed. 

Audience feedback of thriller

Our thriller was received well amongst our class and most didn't have any improvements to make. In response to the following:

1.How/has your opinion changed of our introduction?

2.What scene do you feel had the most impact on you and the film?

3.What scene had the least impact on the introduction?

4.Would you change any elements concerning mise-en-scene?

5.suggest one improvement.

6.Is the music suitable?

The general feedback was that the introduction was more suitable for the tone of the thriller. The audience said that the scene that had the most impact o them was both the last one where sam is attacked. Along with the scene where i appear at the bottom of the stairs through the mirror. Many of the audience said that there wasn't a scene that stood out as being the least impactful.  However a few said that the knife scene was underwhelming. In retrospect we should have done something to make this more dramatic. The improvement that was suggested was sound effects which we later added. 

screening

Tis is when we first screen our media project. As they were watching we asked them to answer the following questions:

1.How/has your opinion changed of our introduction?

2.What scene do you feel had the most impact on you and the film?

3.What scene had the least impact on the introduction?

4.Would you change any elements concerning mise-en-scene?

5.suggest one improvement.

6.Is the music suitable?

Thriller

Audience feedback on Rough Cut

Today we held an audience feedback session. We premiered our thriller opening to the class. We handed all members of the audience a few questions to be thinking about during the thriller.
 These questions were:
1) What is your overall opinion after watching the introduction?
2) What scene do you feel had the most impact on you and the film?
3) What scene was most irrelevant to you and the film?
4) Would you change any elements concerning miss-en-scene?
5) Suggest one improvement
6) Is the music suitable?
And a Mark out of 10

The general feedback was that the thriller was good, but not great. This was what we was expecting as it was a rough edit. There was a lot of variation in the second question. Some people said that the most impactful scene was the stair scene where the intruder (me) follows the homeowner (Sam) up the stairs. Others said the scene that had an effect on them was the scene that showed the me staring through the window. Most people said that the irrelevant scene was the one with Sam reading out the Facebook post. However, we as a group, thought that was a good plot point as it showed that the intruder had put some thought into the attack. So we will have to put extra care into this scene so it comes across as we envisioned it. As far as mise-en-scene, the only suggestion was that, me, the intruder should wear a mask. We still are't sure if we agree with this so we will film the opening in a few times, one with a mask, one without a mask, and one with a scarf covering part of my face. This leaves us with a few options and we can choose the look that suits the plot the most. Again, the music was generally accepted as unsuitable, so this would have to be changed. It should also be stated that we will implement the music in a better way so we have the main character wearing earphones so the music is relevant. Furthermore, we will add some music whenever I come into the shot to further show that i am the villain

Rough cut and analysis

After editing and uploading our rough cut we soon found that we uploaded the wrong video. This was due to the comments on the video that stated it didn't make sense.


This is the thriller opening we uploaded, which is wrongly edited.


As previously stated, this rough cut is wrongly edited which led to the audience being confused as the plot didn't make sense. The missing scene showed the intruder lurking in the garden of the unsuspecting victim. Without this scene the last scene seems very random and abrupt.

Beside from this, during the opening scenes there is a lot of background noise and it takes too long  for the plot to actually get going. Also there are some shots that don't really makes sense as they not showcasing anything particular. For instance the shot where sam opens the first door just shows his coat and nothing that really adds to the story. In addition, there are some editing issues that need to be addressed, these include basic cuts that make the scene seem to drag on. This is because the shots don't really show anything and should've been cut out. Furthermore, there awesome continuity problems with the door just being shut and we can clearly see its open in the next shot.

Editing 2

Today was the last day of editing, we added sound effects whenever the intruder appears to add to the tension. Also, we added the title sequences. This took a while as we had to choose the right fonts to complement the tone of the film. Also, the sound effects took a while ass there was contrasting opinions on the type of sound effects we should use. However, we eventually found a sound effect that we could all agree on. This low rumbling adds an ominous feel to the villain and ensures that the viewer knows this character is dangerous. In addition to adding sounds and titles, we made sure our shots wasn't too long or too short. As discussed in 'Editing 1' this makes it long very unprofessional, so we spent time making sure we found a good balance and ensuring it had that thriller feel to it.

Editing 1

Today we edited our thriller. It ended up looking fairly good considering we haven't spent that much time editing. We didn't add any sound, we only cut clips and chose the footage we actually wanted to use. Next time we edit we will add sound and title sequences to make it feel like an actual thriller. Also, some trimming needs to be done as some of the clips are too long which makes it look unprofessional. However, at the same time we cant make it too short as the thriller will look rushed and unprofessional. The difficult part about the editing is finding the balance between the two so that the scenes are long enough to build suspense, but not too long as to bore the viewer.

Filming 2

Today we filmed our thriller opening. Filming went fairly smoothly as we knew what to expect. The only problem we encountered was the fact that the broken glass we used in the rough cut wasn't there any more. To get around this we improvised and used a knife. This ended up being a good thing as the knife actually looked more dangerous and thrilling. Another thing that was time consuming, was the fact that- due to our audience feedback- i had to wear different outfits. This is because a few people said they would prefer it if i were to wear a mask. I had three outfits, therefore had to film every scene three times. One with a hat, one with the hockey mask( that we will end up using) and one with a black hooded mask. We chose to use the hockey mask as the scenes looked better and more dramatic.
Today's shooting was a lot more efficient than our first time. This is because we knew where we going to take our shots from, we had all the angles and shot types figured out already so there wasn't anything to think about or debate. Also, we already knew what was wrong with our rough cut, this made it easy to improve.

Filming 1

Today was our first day of filming, we managed to film the whole thriller opening. That being said it was a rough cut. The opening sequence of the protagonist coming home took longer than expected due to problems with the lead actor. However, once he started focusing we breezed through most of the scenes. Other problems we faced was the background noise due to the kids playing on the street that we were filming on. This is why we will add music at the start to drown out the background noise. Another slight problem was the fact that this was our first time seeing the house, and so this was the first opportunity to decide where we was going to take the shots from and where everything was going to be placed. Taking that into consideration we actually done well to get it all done. There will be some slight alterations when filming our actual thriller.

Production meeting 4

Today was our final production meeting. This is when we rewatched our rough cut and decided what improvements to make. We chose to shoot from different angles and planned out everything we was going to do to make filming very quick and easy. This is because that was what was wrong with our rough cut, the fact that we decoded what we was doing there and then. This lead to an end product that looked rushed an incomplete. Once what we was doing was pre- determined it eradicated this issue.

Shot list

Scene Shot number
1--------1----------Rolling medium shot of sam walking to door (10secs)
2--------2-3----------Close up of open door and it locking behind him(5secs)
3--------4-5----------Close up of Sam looking at mirror (5secs)
4--------6----------medium shot showing things have been messed with (10secs)
5--------7-8----------eyeline match with broken glass( 5secs)
6--------9-10----------Sam going upstairs (5secs)
7--------11----------medium shot of wardrobe(5secs)
8--------12-13----------closeup of note/ collage (5secs)
9--------14----------close up zooms out to reveal intruder (10secs)
10-------15----------Low angle of intruder attacking (5secs)

Shooting schedule

Wednesday 22nd February. 3:30- 5:00
Thursday 23rd February. 3:30- 5:00

We can film on these days as nobody has any other commitments, also it is important for continuity's sake that we film at the same time of day. In addition, if the weather is different between days we will film inside instead of having that clear difference. Luckily, our thriller opening only has a few shots outside so that shouldn't be too much of a factor.
Filming over two days allows us enough time to ensure we have filmed everything at least a few times so we can choose the best scenes when it comes to editing.