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

When looking back, I feel that I have grown more as a media student. You can really see the differences in the quality of the filming, editing and mise-en-scene.

In the preliminary task:

• Editing-hasn't changed drastically but some of the transitions we used in the preliminary task weren't necessary or accurate to use.




• Filming- small amount of variation of angles and techniques:

Close up of 'target' Long shot from top of stairs

Medium Long shot Birds eye view/high angle of the match on action

• Mise-en-scene-this aspect deffinately improved. In the preliminary task, none of us had appropriate outfits for our sinister characters and roles. This meant that the darker aspects of it wouldn't be transmitted professionally through and our concept was ruined slightly by this. We did, however, think quite in depth about the setting and we picked the darkest, most secluded section of the school and filmed there. It seemed like a dingey alleyway/stairway which gives off the sinister air we were aiming for. The picture of the 'target' was also taken and printed in a rush so we had to make do with what we had.


Dingey alley- mysterious, sinister Slogan t-shirt-doesn't match character profiling,
connotations. light hoody doesn't make it look sinister enough


• Sound-there is slight disturbance in the background as it was a school day.

Click here for the Preliminary task

Opening Sequence:

• Camera-We put in more of a variation of shots- tracking; mid, close up, long shots; pans etc which we didnt apply to our first works.
• Editing-Our transitions were more fluid and professional. Using mainly fades to change scene.
  
• Mise-en-scene: This all changed with the Opening Sequence as we specifically picked out a 'uniform' of hoods and ripped jeans for the mutants as well as 'normal' clothing for the other actors.
  
• I also brought along pale makeup to give the impression of pale skin as a result of lack of sun and nutrition. This makeup was also used to give red eyes, so as to give the impression of sensitive, wild eyes, unused to the sun. It was also used to reveal the concept of them being 'mutants' to the audience without saying it, and to reveal the possibility of drugs testing.
• Other makeup was used to create cuts on mutant 2's leg, which although barely noticable in the opening sequence, would be shown to prove that they have been struggling living in the wild as well as bringing their humanity to the surface-they don't seem as invincible as before. Click here to see my mise-en-scene blog post, showing experimentaion and creation of the fake cuts.
  
• The mud on the trousers and blood on Mutant 1's jumper, all were used to show that they are on the run aswell as revealing their violent nature, whilst the bag linked the past and current events occuring on screen together-continuity.
  
  

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The multiple themes within the film means it could attract a number of people. Within this audience, they would probably:

• Be into Science Fiction
• Have a passion or knowledge of conspiracy theories and secret government experiments.
• Like horrors and thrillers as a genre of film
• Like/Not mind violence, gore and death.
• and/or
• Just love, and feel the need to support, the British Film Industry and Independent film.

Another indicator to the audience would be the age rating. After looking at the age ratings for similar films and looking at http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ , I decided our film would be a rated as 15. This is because of the violence, gore and use of strong language. It would also be due to the fact that the film has predominantly teenage actors, which generally means that teenagers are most likely to be the largest section of the audience. If the age rating were higher then the target audience would not be able to watch it and our film would, most likely, not do well on the opening weekend and in the overall box office. Because of this, the target age of the audience would be within the age of 15 to 20. Following the genre of the film as well, the audience is more likely to be predominantly male, as horror/thriller/actions are usually male dominated, in comparisons to romances and Rom-Com's.
Stereotypically, the audience for these films are either slightly 'geeky', with a love of sci-fi, government conspiracies and scientific experiments etc

or
they would be the 'rockers', who stereotypically are seen to have an obsession with the horror genre, death and gore.

This POST has the links to, and mentions, 2 films which have similar plots to ours and would have a similar audience. Their use of predominantly quite young characters is what makes it clear that a relatively youthful audience is who is being targeted. Also, some of the characters in those fims are not all that dissimilar characteristically to the stereotypes above, showing how relatability with the characters has a strong impact on audience members.

HERE is also a list of films with similar plots and our opinion on how they compare to ours.

What Kind of Media Institution might distribute your media product and why?

We determined that, as we would be part of a small independent film company, the distributor would preferably be part of a large conglomerate so as to make sure our film reaches the largest possible audience without excessive added cost. Due to this, the distributor could potentionally be Fox Searchlight, which, despite being owned by a major company, also regularly supports independent films like ours. Some examples of these are Slumdog Millionaire, Juno and 28 Days Later.
It is also owned by a major media conglomerate: News Corporation. This means that cross media convergence would be available and cheaper and the advertisment campaign would reach a larger audience than would be possible with a smaller company as they already have the means to advertise over many different types of media, such as:

• the Internet - News Corp owns Myspace aswell as other websites and so could create official web pages and themed backgrounds for the film to advertise it;
• Newspapers - News Corp owns multiple newspapers, such as the Sun, and so could put ads in those.
• TV-News corp owns Sky and so could place adverts, and trailers, in whenever possible into the schedule.

Fox Searchlight has also been the distributor for 28 Days Later, which is a film much like ours, with similar plots and characters (as explained in past blog posts). It also distributed 'The Hills Have Eyes'.This means that they are quite likely to be interested in distributing our film as they have had past experience and interest in similar films.
'28 Days Later' trailer
'The Hills Have Eyes' trailer
Both films have mutated humans as their villains:

Both have large, deserted locations:

Both have young characters:

However, Fox Searchlight is a very large company which, despite the fact they support independent films, probably wouldn't distribute such a small, low budget film. If you look at the two film examples above, both have incredible locations, which clearly shows that the budget was quite large and this is what made the films even more effective.
And so, we also decided 'Pathe pictures' could also be a potential distributor. They regularly support smaller, British independant films, much like ours.
The Hole and Creep are both British films which Pathe distributed which have similar plots to ours.

Does our opening sequence challenge, or reinforce, conventions?

Our clip mainly follows the conventions of thriller films due to:

• The eerie twists on normal settings-girls getting murdered in a park
  
  


• It includes blood, death, murder, a pursuit, mystery and revenge-which are all typical of thrillers



• Similarly with the sound effects of feet running, laboured breathing and screaming.





• The 'mutants' in our sequence are kept, for the majority of the time, under their hoods and at angles where their faces are not clear to the audience. This adds the much needed mystery that is a clear convention of thrillers as they keep the audience watching to find out more.

(here is a screen shot of our mutant[left] and a mutant from the film 'The Hills Have Eyes' [right], also wearing a hoody)

• The girls who are murdered are innocent and have had no direct contact with the mutants, previous to their murders. The fact they are killed to keep the murder of the other child secret is a simple enough plot, but the way the niece of the doctor is murdered by the mutants as the first step in what is to be a long and complex act of cold hearted revenge, is a more complex idea which is a common convention.

However, our thriller film also challenges conventions as:

• It is set in the day/twilight





• The mutants are knowledgable and complex creatures with co-ordination and communication abilities which isn't typical of most past thriller films as a majority of zombie-like creatures are incapable of all human and logical thought processes.

On our group blog, we have also analysed the opening titles of 28 days later. Click here to go to the post on the group blog.

Although only the titles, you can see how uour film is similar as our titles are all in white, with dark backgrounds. The titles in 28days later reflects the theme using blood effects and swift and untidy movements, whereas ours uses just plain white writing, but it is in a font which is reminiscent of bandages or an 'INSANE' stamp, which fits in with our plot and the slow, flowing movement from the right to left refleccts to mutants slow, calculating attack on the Dr.

Character Profiles

On our group blog, we have created character profiles by comparing the characters in our Opening Sequence to characters from similar films such as '28 Days Later', 'I am Legend', '28 Weeks Later' and 'The Hole'.
The characters/actors in our opening sequence are all teenagers, ranging from about 13 to 17. This is done so as to attract our target audience of teenagers, as they are the most likely audience to watch our film.


Click here to view the character profiles on the group blog.