How did you attract/address your audience?

After finishing editing our film, we uploaded it to YouTube [click here to view] and by doing this, it allowed other people to comment on it, giving us constructive criticism for our work. As we asked members from our class and school to comment, we actually succeeded in aquiring the opinion of our target audience. Their criticisms allowed us to found out what they thought was wrong and needed changing (such as the titles moving too fast and the transitions disrupting the flow of certain parts) and so we could fix it marginallt before burning it to disk.

However, their comments [click here to view] were mostly very positive. They liked:

• The panning around ellie at the end.
• The dramatic irony that we knew the girl was being followed, whilst she innocently skipped along
• Black and white effect made it look 'professional' and 'dramatic'.
• The sounds of the radio tuning along with the announcement let the audience know what was going on without giving everything away.
• The varied camera shots and angles
• and the music, especially the tune right at the end.

Our audience surveys provided us with results which helped us develop the plot of our film and sequence so that it suited their needs. We first said that the villains were to be zombies, but that idea wasn't preferred so we changed it to mutants which seemed to be appreciated.
We also made sure to keep in as many action/horror/sci-fi conventions as action, fear factor and sci-fi were all aspects of thrillers which were enjoyed the most by our audiences.
Links to the questionnaire and the analysis.

What have you learnt about technology from the process of onstructing this product?

I-movie is a programme used for editing film. With it, you can rearrange clips, add titles, add transitions, alter colours, levels and hues of the shots as well as adding sound and effects.

We used I-Movie to edit our opening sequence. Here, I have edited some of the first section of the sequence in order to show just a small section of what I have learnt on I-movie in comparison to my complete lack of experience and knowledge on it before.

ONE:
The first edit i did would not load onto YouTube.

TWO:
[Click here for the YouTube link]-I recommend watching with high volume.

This change in music was used to add tension and suspense. The low hum, and slight change is constant, much like their movement. In the last part, just as he gets closer, the music gets louder and intense so as to show the danger approaching. The sound is reminiscent of the low, for boding music in Jaws.

THREE:
[Click here for YouTube link.]

This scene had the music altered to a louder, more repetitive acoustic guitar sound. The intended effect was to add more tension to the clip as the sound only starts when the mutant appears to show that there is some meaning behind his presence. Also, it's continuous, cyclic nature is almost annoying as it feels like it should change soon, which is much like the nature of this scene with the girl skipping for a long time and the mutant is following, but not doing anything to her, though you know he will.

FOUR:
[Click link to watch YouTube clip]

For this, I decided to change the colour of the mutants point of view to deep red, so as to show his animalistic, vicious, blood-thirsty nature.

To conclude, digital editing helps to add, and accentuate, the emotion and connotations within the shots. The varied camera shots and editing with colour and sound hint at future events, atmosphere and add even more tension than the film produces on its own.
By doing these testers on IMovie, I really learnt how digital editing creates even deeper meanings and adds to complex plot lines. Without digital editing, most films, including our opening sequence, would be much less effective and so it is highly important to have the knowledge and skills to be able to edit digitally for work in a media career.

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.

Mise-en-scene

My role in our media group was to provide and organise all the mise-en-scene for our thriller opening sequence. In this role, I had to assist with making and coming up with the idea of the costumes [which included ripping up my own jeans and covering them in mud] as well as supplying and applying makeup for the mutants' faces.

This also meant practicing making fake cuts for Mutant 2's leg.
The process was long and complex as I did not buy any professional makeup or equipment for this experiment.

My Tools:


[Items from left to right]

• Liquid eyeliner
• Fake blood
• Hair styling wax,
• lipstick,
• sponge and cutical stick, used to apply the makeup.
• White facepaint [incase you need to be made 'deathly' white for a spooky effect]
• eyeshadow [was accidentally left out of the picture.]

As you can see, I was using basic makeup supplies to do this task with as we did not have the budget to pay for better quality supplies.

Method:

First, you scoop some hair wax onto the area you want the cut to be.

Smooth down the edges onto the skin so that it forms a smooth lump. Then, slice down the centre with a thin tool to create the basic effect of cut skin.

Run down this line with liquid eyeliner so as to add depth to the cut.

Then scrape out the deep and bright red lipstick from it's container and 'splodge' into the line. This should create a nice effect of bloody flesh or drying blood.

You can widen the edges of the cut using a thin, sharp-ish tool, and then press (lightly) with flesh toned eyeshadow/lipstick onto the inside and a bit on the outside so as to rid the wax of it's white colouring and to make it more natural looking.

[I got a bit carried away so these and the next few steps are missing ^^]

Finally, add fake blood along the line, making it look fresh and gorey. And there you have a fake cut. Here are some of my examples frm different angles.

A very thin cut, the edges were pressed back in on themselves and the blood went over them slightly so it looks almost infected, but very effective at the same time.

[The light started to go, so I had to get closer to the window to get good lighting]

A wider, more gorey cut. This started off as a smaller cut [the one in the method], but I used a pointed tool to loosen the wax near the skin and pushed the sides further apart and covered the newly exposed skin messily in the deep and bright red lippy aswell as fakeblood and a bit of eyeshadow to make it look a little bit more textured. This appears to be more like a gunshot or bite wound-both of which would be appropriate for our film.

Opening Sequences

What I have learnt from analysing these opening sequences is that, when I make my own, this is what I should attempt to include:

• Typical conventions and iconography to hint strongly to the viewer that the sequence is of the 'thriller' genre.
• The main character of the film must be one of the first people seen or heard in the opening sequence.
• Small things which hint at aspects of their characteristics and identity. They must be simply portrayed, without too much detail.
• Camera movement, shots and angles must all focus mainly on the character and their motions/activities, to show their importance and reveal status.
• They must also preferably show the setting and hint at narrative.
• To add tension and decrease tension, alter the pace of the editing, music, sounds and action.
• Keep the lighting and colours appropriate to the subject matter and genre; dark and/or cold.
• Mise-en-scene should also hint at narrative, characteristics, setting, time, location etc. This should be done using props such as clothing, equipment, makeup etc.
• Most importantly, the opening sequence should leave the audience with questions they want answered. This will intrigue them to keep watching.

'Hard Candy' Opening Sequence Analysis

TITLES:

• Lion's Gate Films


• Vulcan Productions

The screen is bright white, with only 2 black lines on it, which gives the appearance of the edges of walls of a doorway. There is also a red square which moves around screen and where it moves, titles appear in simple black font. The lines on screen move around and change too, but they always look like they are outlines of parts of a room such as skirting board, windows and doors. This may show that something is ever changing and not what it seems.

*Click here to watch the title sequence*

This may also be so that we get an idea of a room that is shown later on in the film and is of some importance.

The colours contrast really well. The shocking red against the bright white really stands out. The red may stand for blood, passion, lust, death. The white might stand for innocence, purity, goodness. This may mean that something may tarnish some one's innocence.

SOUND:

• Non-diagetic: the music during the titles is reminiscent of a music box or lullaby, this makes it seem (as we know it is a thriller) quite eerie. It also, reminds you of children and childhood so it suggests age is a strong factor in the film.


• Diagetic: The sound of silence is prominant, there is a really low frequency hum which is barely noticeable. The only noise made is the sound of typing and the notification 'ding' sound that the computer makes when a message is received and sent. This puts emphasis on the conversation and how it is not in person.


• Once the girl sends the last part of the conversation saying goodbye and clicks 'enter', the screen goes black and the low frequency hum of the sound of silence cuts out. This makes it seem very final and menacing; like what has been done cannot be 'undone'.

CAMERA:

• stays as an extreme close up of the screen, only changing angles and positions every now and again to keep the audience's interest and to focus on different parts of the conversation.

MISE-EN-SCENE:

• The first thing you see is in black and white and its an extreme close up of a computer screen and the conversation going on it on an instant messaging programme.


• As the conversation goes on, the conversation matter changes from flirting to actual plans to meet up. When this happens, the screen changes from black and white into colour, emphasising the importance of the plans.

CHARACTERS:

• It introduced to us two characters, known only by their screen names; 'thonggrrrl14' and 'Lensman319' , and we know that it is the former character whose computer we are looking at as you can see what she types before it is sent to the other character.


• You don't see any physical people, but you witness a conversation happening. The messages they are sending to each other are filled with shameless flirting and banter, this shows us the relationship they have and what kind of people they are.


• The character 'thonggrrrl14' mentions her big sister, showing that she is quite young


• Lensman319 has a camera as his icon, linking this with his screen name, shows he might like photography or that he is a photographer.

To me, it seems like the 2 characters have met online and have some feelings for eachother. The slight hints about age make me feel like there is some unethical behaviour going on here. Thonggrrrl14 seems to be quite young. The way she 'speaks', her screen name (the repetition of letters in the word 'grrrl' (girl) shows she is young, and having the number 14 suggests that she is, in fact, 14yrs old), and the mention of her 'big sister', hints at a youthful person. The screen name Lensman319, suggests the character is older because it says 'man' and the subject matter he talks about seems more adult too. This reveals to me that Lensman might be an older boy or even a pedophile and that 'thonggrrrl14' is his next victim. As it seems he likes photography, I assume that, following stories of girls hoping for their 'big break' who get kidnapped by men disguising themselves as photographers, that he may have promised her the chance to be a famous model or something along those lines.

NARRATIVE:

The characters meet online and decide to meet up. The events that occur after that will be based on the fact he is older than her and how unethical his intentions may be.

WHAT KEEPS US WATCHING?

it makes us ask questions:

• Who are these characters?


• How old are they?


• When did they meet?


• How do they feel about each other?


• What will happen when they meet up?


• Is he a pedophile?


• Are they who they seem?


• Is he a photographer?
  
• Is she in danger?
  
• WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT??

'District 9' Opening Sequence Analysis

TITLES:

• Tristar a Sony Pictures Entertainment company: the film should have a good budget as it is a well known company.

CONVENTIONS:

• aliens, spaceships, fighting, discontent, government, a larger force trying to be in control of other things-these are all conventions of a sci-fi thriller

MISE-EN-SCENE:

• A man with a microphone being interviewed
  
• office behind him
  
• props: computers, phones, uniforms etc


• Aliens (aka Prawns)


• Spaceship
  
• Other Interviewees

CHARACTERS:

• the man is the first person we hear and see. He is the main focus of the first few shots and seems to be important throughout the whole of the opening sequence.
• We learn that he is working in an office, one that handles alien issues.
• He seems to be quite slow, nervous and slightly unintelligent by the way he fumbles about with the microphone not knowing where to put it and taking so long with it. Also, in the way he rambles on about his wife and doesn't know where to look whilst talking.
• He is from Johannesburg.
• His name is shown on the corner of the screen, as is his occupation.

CAMERA AND EDITING:

• looks like an interview and/or documentary-has the character's name and occupation at the left hand corner of the screen and is constantly focused on the character without movement at a medium/close up level.


• Some shots look like they are taken from a hand held camera as it wavers, zooms and focuses within the shot. This is predominantly when filming the spaceship so it looks like a civilian has filmed it or as if an official person who is an untrained cameraman has been hired to document the goings on.

• quick shots and camera movements to show destruction. Makes it seem more panicky and rushed.

SOUND:

• the muffling of the microphone being moved about


• the dialogue of the main character, the interviewer and the other interviewees


• the prawns


• the sound of the drill cutting into the spaceship


• these are all diagetic sounds which all seem to be part of the 'documentary'.

WHAT KEEPS US WATCHING?

It is a very unconventional way of filming and that intrigues us.

It also makes us ask lots of questions:

• why did the spaceship break down?


• Did the ship actually break down or is that a cover?


• what will happen to the aliens?


• why do the people disrespect them?
  
• whats going to happen?
  
• what is the man's role in all of the future events?


• are the aliens hostile?


• will they get to go back to their planet?

NARRATIVE:

• I think that the film is about an alien spaceship which has broken down over Johannesburg. The aliens inside are trapped and when the humans free them they create a horrible slum for them to live in. It seems that the aliens are treated unfairly and unethically and that events will progress from there. The man introduced at the very start will be a main character in the film, and, due to the fact he seems to be quite clumsy and awkward, something bad will happen to him.

*click here to watch the first 5 minutes of the film.*