Evaluation - Question 3 - Sophie

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

The distribution process of low budget, indepedent film productions has changed massively as the industry moves into a digital stage. Where films used to be only exhibited in cinema or TV screenings, in the Alalogue age, home viewing has changed dramatically as a result of a digital revolution. New devices and platforms to watch films on (consoles, tablets, phones, computers) have developed alongside new suppliers of films such as Sky, LoveFilm, Netflix and YouTube. 

For Example, Netflix (founded in 1997) is an Calefornian Film Distribution company which started as a DVD rental business which would delivered DVD's to peoples days, on a pay per rental basis, with additional fares for delivery and late returns. However in 2007, the company delivered its billionth DVD and began to move away from its original core business model of mailing DVDs by introducing video on demant via the Internet. As a result, Netflix grew as DVD sales fell from 2006 to 2011. Now Netflix is one of the biggest film distribution companys in the word, with a pool of 100,000 films to watch online, stretching to most target audiences and social groups. 

There are quite a few reasons why the distribution of films is turning digital but the main reason is costs. It is considerably cheaper to have an online download than to print off DVDs for sale, and even more expensivc for copies to be made for cinema showings (£1500 each copy - indie films would have around 10 copys). 
Due to this, one good option would be to get involved with Netflix or Amazon Prime in order to distribute our film. Through Netflix of Amazon Prime Instant Movie, the film would be exhibited through modern technologies and oppertunities and fundimentally through home viewing as supposed to cinema showings. Having our film available on an online download store, would be suitable for our given target audience (15-24 year olds), especially as these online companies are often available on smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices, making watching our film alot more casual and easily accessable for the audience. 

One other option is to skip the distribution company stage and deal with it ourselves, on YouTube for example, getting money from advertisments. However, that would involve a whole new process of building up a fan base, where Netflix for example already has a multitude of subscribers from all different ages and prefered genres (especially young people). In addition, Netflix would allow users who have wants films similar to 'Pursue' to link directly to our film by recommendation. 

So overall, I am going to say the best option would be to get involved with the online distribution companies Netflix, and use their contacts (streaming on consoles etc) and marketing strategys (advertisements on other Netflix films, online posters, etc) to build a fan base and release our film in the most cost effective way. 

Evaluation - Question 4 - Sophie

Who would be the audience for your media product? 

Our target audience is 15 - 24 year olds, generally we are aiming for both males and females however given the themes and characters involved, it most like to be women that we will be focusing our marketing on. The films ceritificate is a 15. We have made this our target audience as the themes represented in the storyline (kidnapping) is very up to date themes that apply to the current young people of today more than older generations.

In addition, It is most likely that our choice of casting will appeal to women alot more than men. With the main protagonist being a young women, many of our audience will be able to relate. However the main casting for men is the antagonist who is represented in a negative way as the kidnapper. This isn't to say that no men will enjoy the film, it just appears to be most likely that women will be the main gender to target.

We expect our target audience to be from the same fan base a few other films:

Baby Call - Directed by Pal Sletaune - Certificated at 15 

Baby Call is about a mother and her 8 year old son who are under witness protection following a difficult relationship with Ander(the son)'s father. Again here the use of gender stereotypes (women in a place of vulnerability and in threat of a man) is used, much like our opening, which consiquently 

Gone - Directed by Ringan Ledwidge - Certificated at 15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giRMhrOdVzg

Gone is a film that is based around a young women (Jill Parrish), who returns from a night shift to find that her sister has been obducted by the very people Jill was captured by the previous year. The plot is based around her finding her sister in time before she is killed. We would expect almost the exact audince as this film, not only it again based around a young women and conforming with gender stereotypes, but the themes displayed are exact (never being able to really escape from your obducters - hence the name Pursue)

*Screenshots aren't currently working so this still needs to be finished* 

Evaluation - Question 5 - Sophie

Here is my Question 5, presented on Prezi:

http://prezi.com/boiqbqokgj7m/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Evaluation 2 Alex Barker

Our thriller opening represents very little social groups as there are only the given circumstances of 2 characters. Our thriller film is aimed at ages 15 to 25 and is aimed mostly at a mixed gender despite our hero being female. It would appeal to the female audience as it our protagonist is a young male and is wearing a jogger’s outfit. Therefore this already gives the impression that she is an innocent person doing a daily routine. Also she is listening to her music via earphones therefore that adds to the innocent impression which is given from her. This impression of her that is gives the believe that she is a character the audience can trust and figure that she is a protagonist. Stereotypically when the character is seen as the protagonist because of how she is represented in the opening. This is to create enigma and questions for the rest of the film to answer on who is she.  With the camera angles and shots used when the antagonist is shown in shot are mostly low angles with mid shots while the antagonist is seen in long shots. This shows that they should be looked up at and that they're rated quite highly in the film. However in the machine room the camera is positioned high and the camera looks down on the machines. This shows that these props play a key role in the film and will be brought up later on. This opening I believe is similar to many thriller films because a lot of films with the idea of innocence but then a danger occurs.

Evaluation 4 Alex Barker

Who would be the audience for your media product?

When planning our opening the target audience for our media we believed was between the ages of around 15-25, mixed gender despite our hero being female, however our age licensing for the film is a '15' rated.

We decided the age rating to be this because majority of thriller films seemed to be license as a 15 rated film such as “The Woman In Black” and “Sixth Sense” which were both aimed at the male/female target audiences. Despite the fact that both these thrillers have a male protagonist we decided to go for a female target so that it would appeal for a female audience and to get audience interested even more as it has not been done often in thriller films. For our antagonist we went for a male role and chose the stereotypical colours of black and with the face covered as it leaves a mystery on who our antagonist is. We also felt that it would be needed to give our film a “15 age rating” because we thought it was an suitable rating that our target audience would fit comfortably into this category and the fact that there isn't enough violence or gore that would make it any more than a '15'. By having the protagonist who was age 18, this would also help interest our target audience as our character herself fits in between our target audience age range and also the view that the audience can relate to the events and thoughts and feelings of the character in a much more of an open opinion.

Last of all we tried to use the influence of popular suspenseful films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s films where they all follow the trend that the music plays a key role to those films. Many of them follow a related trend in standings of how it is filmed and how the plot works. In these types of films, there can be a lot of ideas to do with what is going on inside the characters heads. This can be linked to our footage when our character begins to suffer illusions shown by close ups of her face we are shown her illusions by the change of music and mixes shots of her and parts of the machine. This idea to me was influenced by the film “Vertigo” where their main character suffers from vertigo as when he looks down the camera shot of him is a close up showing his face and what he is going through. By doing close ups it shows our character’s feelings and emotions of how she is feeling, but in the perspective of her body doing actions. For example, when the character is walking up to the tree we see her in a mid-shot of her slow walking and herself acting weak showing the illusions are effecting her, indicating how condition she is having.

Evaluation - Question 2 - Sophie

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main protagonist in our opening represents a young, middle class, white female.
In the first few shots, through camera angles, shot sizes and music she is shown as independent and a strong character. For example, the low angle panning shot of her legs (revealing her whole body) shows her from the first shot of her from the ground, giving the idea that she is strong character with high power in this section. Following this shot she continues to be represented as a strong character, specifically through extreme long shots of her running through the woods. Where extreme long shots can be used to show someone vulnerability in a scene, we used these to show how alone however confident she is.

Establishing shot of the woods

Panning MS of the protagonist's legs

Up until the protagonists flashback, she is continued to be shown as a character with high levels of power and status. Specifically when she kneels down by the river, although we are aware that she is having hallucinations and may faint, we chose to still show her through a low angle shot from the ground so that she still looked like a strong character.

Low angle shot of protagonist by the stream

However this all changes after the flashback sequence. The second shot we see being an extreme long shot of her kneeling by the stream, shows her as extremely vulnerable and it is here that the thriller conventions of a young vulnerable women being in danger from a dominant direct threat (in this case a kidnapper) comes into play. Especially as the audience now can see that the man is following her, therefore placing him with the higher status and power level.



The antagonist of our opening represents young, lower/working class, white males. In contrast to the representation of the protagonist, the male is represented in a negative light. The man is represented through sound as the character with much power and authority (even if not class). The non-diegetic tense soundtrack used for the flashback sequence, represents his character as a big threat as he walks and runs his hands around the machinery.

  

Evalation 5 Alex Barker

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Here you need to explain why your audience would enjoy your film. Select detail from your film to support your answer, including material on, for example, the story told through the narrative, the use of camera, the use of mise en scene, the use of character, the reference to certain themes or issues, and the use of sound.

Why do you think the characters help to target this audience? Perhaps your representation fits in with standard stereotypes? If so, you will need to discuss why this is, and explain why you did this. Do not simply describe what kind of person your character is: description is not textual analysis, and will not achieve a pass grade!

As I said about the target audience, we believed the target audience age to 15 to 18. To understand what the target audience look for in a thriller film. We used a survey/questionnaire website called Survey Monkey https://www.surveymonkey.com/ which allows users from around the world to answer a range of questions of the subject and give their opinion. Plus it would give us a percentage on what was the best answer. To tell everyone about our questionnaire we would upload the survey link to our social networks which were Facebook and Twitter so that family and friends could give their opinion. This survey was extremely helpful as it told us what the audience like about the thriller genre and what is needed to make it the best. We would then use our results and edit or add improvements to our storyboard. Below the paragraph here is what the audience thought.

By using mise-en-scene we were able to make our thriller opening look improved and give a higher amount of tension. In the sequence there were 2 locations: the woods which were filmed in East Grinstead and in Sophie’s dad shed. The shed was a vital location set as it contained mechanical equipment and dust which created the mood of enigma to the audience.

The costume for our protagonist was the basic joggers outfit to give the idea that the innocent can be put in dangerous situations. We used earphones as the prop so our protagonist was listening to music that the audience could hear (diegetic sound). We also used old machines to create a tone of tension that would be filmed as close-ups. The main reason we chose our main character to be female was because stereotypically the female charaters in horror are all ways seen as in dangerous circumstances 

Evaluation 1 Alex Barker

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

In our project, our group worked and looked on using a variety of conventional features of thriller as a whole to our best ability and the impact it has to the audience. One of our main purposes for our thriller was to leave the audience questioning wanting to know more about the opening which many other thriller openings use. This is called enigma.

By using enigma we would create part of film to be mysterious.  In particularly our opening scene the purpose was to make the sequence be unpredictable and to have tension to the audiences from the start. We achieved this by doing the following: we would edit the shots and linking other shots. We would then trim them making them 3 seconds roughly each shot. This would make the shots be fast paced clips. An example of this is when we film the girl running by using a range of shots shot from behind her or behind a tree where this would give the idea she was been watch without her knowing this would be the starter of the tension. However to limit it we would place diegetic upbeat music to give the idea the audience is listening to her music in her earphones. For her running, we used a range of shots such as a medium close up of half her body moving and close up shots of her feet. All of the editing of them shots would be cross cutting to make the scene start with less tension. But as she starts to suffer with flashbacks the cutting would change to parallel cutting combined with a change of music and close up of her face and shots of the machinery. The shots would then be mixed with a white fade to show that our character suffering from hallucinations and feeling weak. This would give questions to the audience on what is going on and if are character would be able to make through this. This is where the tension would begin.

When planning, we wanted a range of random and fidgety cross-cuts in order to make the audience feel uncomfortable and question what was going on such as close up of our character and would fade back and forth to old machinery and webs.

Mise en scene

Setting: Both the settings we used were very stereotypical for a thriller piece. The rural, quiet woods which she was running in contrasted effectively with the dirty machinery room.

Lighting: we used very low key lighting which was used for the machinery room shots, which contrasted well with the morning sun light in the running sequence. When put together they would contrast between each other by the lighting working well together to improve to darkness of the flashbacks and as a result it would have a bigger impact on the audience.

Costume, Hair & Makeup: The costume of the kidnapper especially fitted in with the conventions of thriller. He was wearing all black, with a big coat on meaning you were unable to see his face, which again added enigma.

Which I studied Mise en scene in thriller as part of the pre-production planning.  One of the factors our group liked was the idea that the shots were consistently random which as a result kept the audience guessing. But the contrasting shots would be related to each other which led the audience to be kept interested. The low key lighting of the shots in “The Woman in Black” meant that the dark atmosphere would be shown to the audience another way of creating tension. When we picked the flashing shots would be used the purpose was to have a view of relevance to the character's background life rather than be random shots to set the genre and be used for no reason. Therefore we decided for the flashbacks that we placed the section her life on when she was kidnapped and kept. Furthermore, we wanted the shots to start off as random shots of machinery but we also wanted to develop the extreme close ups of significant objects such as the women's ring and close ups of the women being held hostage with diegetic sounds of her heavy breathing and shots of her foot on the floor with very little lighting. Finally at the end we would use an extremely shadowed close up of the man’s face, half revealing him for the first time this would be there for 1 seconds so that the audience would not have that long to see his face and not enough time to gather his appearance properly.

Although we used very little music for our opening. The music used against the flashback sequence worked well as it would create suspense and enigma by the use of tense instrumental music. 

Evaluation, question 3, Amy Sharp

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

We have produced a low budget thriller film in our role as an Independent British Film production company and do not aim to compare our product to those of the high end in media distribution and institutions.

Distribution is about reaching our target audience with the product for their viewing, it brings the film to life. It is the most important part of the process as it connects the product with an audience, this can be done in two ways:

1. Cinema 
2. Home viewing

 To go down to cinema route we would not consider high end, popular cinema as we are low budget and independent so our film would not compete against the films shown. We would aim for independent cinemas like the 'Duke of Yorks' in Brighton, Gate in London or little theater cinema in York. These cinemas would be visited by our target audience so would fit with our film and marketing. However, films can be consumed/viewed on a variety of products:

-Mobile devices
-Computers
-TV
-DVD
-Games console
 Therefore, home viewing produces more options at a cheaper cost that can reach our target audience more effectively as is more direct with digital viewing. Having our film released downloadable on Itunes and viewable on Netflix, Youtube and Vimeo would reach our target audience directly and having advertisements and marketing online through social networking would further widen the films consumption. The only downside to this type of marketing would be piracy, we could lose a considerable amount of control over how our film is consumed but that is a risk we would take. The next step would be to release our film on DVD if there was a high consumption and strong positive feedback.

We would be looking at low budget independent distribution companies for example 'Diffusion Pictures' and we would give them licence to the film. This means the distributor requires legal rights to exploit our film.

For home viewing and allowing the audience to view the film on a variety of digital technologies I would chose Netflix as a main distribution. This is because it is becoming increasingly popular with our target audience and in more recent years majority of our audience tend to view programs and films via sites like netflix and iplayers rather than watching them first hand on tv. The other main reason is because netflix has an 'independent' category which our film would fit into as well as a 'thriller' category this further shows that Netflix would be the best option for our film.

'White bird in a blizzard'

White bird in a blizzard is a low budget independent thriller film released last year. It is about 'a teenage girl's life is thrown into chaos when her mother disappears.'Set in 1988, it is a 15 rating and the distribution companies for this film are:

• Bac Films
• Magnolia Pictures

This example is to show a real life independent thriller film that is distributed by these two institutions, these would be institutions that would distribute our film.

Evaluation - Question 1 - Sophie

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

In our project, we worked on using the stereotypical conventions of thriller to our best ability.
An aspect that we worked on specifically in order to intrigue the audience is enigma.
Our aim was to create a piece of film which was unpredictable and kept audiences on their feet from start to finish. We went about achieving this in a few ways. We purposely edited the establishing shots along with shot, fast paced clips of the women's feet running, this was in order to replicate shots from a chase scene, which contrasted well with the calm establishing shots of the setting. Once the audience had established that the women isn't being chased, but is on a run, followed a few mid shots & long shots of her running, we introduced a hallucinated section of editing where the audience could see through a point of view shot that she was hallucinating and feeling faint, again showing itin a way that the audience were not able to see her but just experience what she was, was in order to create enigma and mystery as to what was going on and where the story was going to go.

  

We decided early on in the planning process that we wanted to include random and edgy cross-cuts in order to make the audience feel uncomfortable and question what was going on, eg/ cobwebs, old machinery, dirt, rusty nails etc. We got initial inspiration for this kind of sequence, from the opening of the film 'SEVEN' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2gsEI34CE) which I analyzed as part of the pre-production planning. We liked the way the shots were very random so therefore kept the audience guessing however all still related to each other the audience were kept interested. The low key lighting of the shots in SEVEN meant that a dark, suspicious atmosphere is given off to the audience, which is something we also wanted to achieve.

 



We decided that the flashing shots needed to have some kind of relevance to the character's story rather than random shots to set the genre - hence we decided on a flash back that we has of a time when she was kidnapped and kept hostage (themes correlating with the genre). In addition, from that we decided that we wanted the shots to start off as random shots of machinery, cobwebs, nails etc but we wanted it to develop to extreme close ups of significant objects (the women's ring) and parts of the women being held hostage (heavy breathing lips, her naked foot on the dirty floor,) and finally to climax to an extremely shadowed close up of the mans face, half revealing him for the first time.
This technique worked well at keeping the enigma continuing through the film opening. 

 

In addition to the editing choices, we decided we wanted to have a restricted narrative for the opening, meaning that the audience knew little about the story and what was going on. We achieved this by revealing very little about who the characters were (especially during the flash back sequence, where shots consisted of extreme close ups of body parts, ie a foot or lips etc).

The sound side of our opening wasn't that strong. However, the music used against the flashback sequence worked well at creating suspense and enigma, with the tense orchestral music. 

Mise en scene
Setting: Both the settings we used were very stereotypical for a thriller piece. The rural, quiet woods which she was running in contrasted effectively with the dirty machinery room.
(screenshots of scenery)
Lighting: Low key lighting was used for the machinery room shots, which contrasted well with the morning sun light in the running sequence. Together the two contrasting lighting keys worked well to enhance to darkness of the flashbacks and therefore have a bigger impact on the audience.
Costume, Hair & Makeup: The costume of the kidnapper especially fitted in with the conventions of thriller. He was wearing all black, with a big coat on meaning you were unable to see his face, which again added enigma.