Evaluation of Finished Production - Question five

How did we attract/address our audience?

I attracted an audience in many different ways, one of the ways was through facebook, i used this to publish my survey on to it, so i had a wider variety of people acknowledging thrillers, and i particular our thriller. I feel that this worked. This seemed to work reasonably well as i did get a few responses, however not as many as i would of liked.

There are different ways in which we kept the audience was kept engaged through the thriller. We done this by creating suspense and tension which made the person want to keep watching to find out what happened next. In the previous question i mentioned using survey monkey to help find out what the audience would like to see involved in a thriller. We used female actors, and we used the age of which was most popular with the survey results this meant that the viewers could feel more involved and relate to what was going on. Also all of our actors were of similar age to those who we want to watch our thriller. As we used teenagers in our thriller it means that the audience will be able to feel our main characters fear and be able to imagine themselves in the same situation. We tried to make our characters look like they are from a normal working class background, this meant it was easier for the audience to relate to them as they live the same type of lifestyle. I think i used the information from my survey monkey results quiet effectively to produce a better outcome on the thriller. I took into consideration what people wanted to see, and who seemed more interested in thrillers and worked around it.

The location for our thriller was picked rather carefully and we believe that we picked a good setting, we thought it was very effective as it was eerie. We had decided to film over Eastbrook End Country Park as it was very deserted, with the location picked it added to the mysterious effect and added to the tension which we had already created. The trees and the bushes, made it seem very eerie and scary as they were looming over the people and made them look small and vulnerable. The setting was in some ways perfect as it was deserted, it made it seem that if the protagonist was to run away they had no where to run, as their was a lack of space and would be hunted down. Although, the tree's were surrounding the people, they were closely packed together, this made less space for the protagonist to run, and made it look like she was cornered.

From the image above you can see there is little space for the protagonist to run, this can help build up the suspense and the feeling that the individual is being trapped.
We ended our thriller on  a cliffhanger, this would encourage the person watching want to continue watching the thriller. This is because from the thriller which they had seen it made them ask a lot of questions, such as 'Where have the girls friends gone?' 'Who was on the phone?' 'Who is the antagonist?' 'What does he want with the girl?' 'Will the girl survive?' 'What has he done/ going to do with her?'

Evaluation of Finished Production - Question four

Who would be the audience for our media product?

Previously i have done some research into who could be the thrille's audience by creating a survey on http://www.surveymonkey.com/. This enabled me to discover the age group which be more likely to watch our thriller. I had only recieved 8 responses on my survey after posting it to popular social networks such as facebook and twitter, many people did not reply. This means my results were not as reliable as i would of liked them to be, as i would of liked at least 30 or 40 responses.

Our thriller can be watched by anyone however will have a more popular audience. It can relate to different people in different ways. The target audience would more likely to be females between the ages of 17-24 as this was the largest age group, of people who answered in my thriller survey. I think this is because they can relate to our female protagonist who is a teenager, and they may be able to put themselves in her situation, and feel that she is weak and vulnerable.

To ensure that the audience were interested in the thriller, in my survey i asked the question 'what do you think makes a good thriller'. I got a few different answers, however as not many people completed my survey it made it difficult for me to create wordle that had numerous and various words in it. Although saying that, below are some of the answers which were given;

 

I think if i am to use survey monkey again iwill encourage more people to complete my thriller, and upload it onto various social networking sites for a wider variety of results. I will also tell people about my survey and ask them if they could fill it in for me, if i gave them the web address

Evaluation of Finished Product - Question three

What type of media institution might distribute your media production and why?

There are quite a few variaties of media institutions which might like to distribute our media production, as they fit their criteria for a thriller rather well. In order to find out which one may be more likely to distribute our thriller i done some research into the different types of production companies which have previously been known to produce thrillers, such as warner brothers, dimension films, Summit productions and Universal Studio.

Question 3

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Evaluation of Finished Production - Question two

There were very few actors in our thriller opening, this was because people who wanted to participate in our short film were very limited. We used 4 females over all in our thriller however we did use a female to play the male antagonist. We tried to get the females to try and look as weak and vulnerable as possible, so that they fitted their characters better. However a female critic could argue that we are being prejudice by making the females look weak towards the man, like he is more dominating. We had originally planned for a male to play the part of the antagonist, but after some confusion this had to be changed. This means a female critic could also protest that it is unfair for one female to be portrayed as a dominant male, and the others looking weak and vulnerable.

The character on the left of the picture was the protagonist during our 2 minute thriller. She is shown as a 'normal' teenager in a normal situation, from what she knew she was simply going out with her friends. She could be seen as having a normal life, however in the thriller she is portrayed as quiet weak and vulnerable, to make it obvious that she is the victim of the stalker. She seems to be from a working class background as she is not over dressed and looks like an average teenager. Her sexuality is unknown and also irrelivant

The person in the centre of the image is the antagonist, we do not know much about this character, this causes the effect of an enigma and the scary effect which causes an ominous effect.

Finally the other two people in the image were the protagonists friends, they were also 'normal' teenagers and we didn't dig deep into their characters. Their part in the story was to keep the story flowing . Like the protagonist they are working class and their sexuality is not exposed in the thriller. Not much is revealed about these two.

We did not put much thought into ethnic minoritites as we didnt think it would make of a difference which ethnicity our actors were. However we did try to refrain from using any prejudice or racist language or remarks as this could cause a problem if the thriller was to be watched as a film. Although, by having the protagonist as a mixed race person this could be seen as a racist remark as it could look as though the thriller is suggesting that mixed race people are weaker and more vulnerable than others. However by saying that we could say that if we had put a mixed race of black person as our antagonist it could be suggested that we are stereotyping as our antagonist was also wearing a 'hoodie'.

We felt that sexuality was not relivant throughout the thriller and it was not revealed at any stage. Although the pictures of the protagonist on the antagonists wall are placed in a heart shape, it may seem that the antagonist is in love with the thriller, however we only done this to portray the antagonists obsession with the protagonist, as we do not know the sex of the antagonist it is irrelivant of what their sexuality is.

Our thriller is not likely to be watched by younger children as it can be seen as innapropriate and too disturbing or frightening for them. The teenagers in our thriller are portrayed as 'normal' teens this means our thriller is more for the adolenscent age catagory, As we show the girls as 'working class' and normal, the audience should be able to relate to them better as the characters are 'ordinary' making the audience more involved in the thriller.

Evaluation of Finished Product - Question one

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

Below is a powerpoint on what conventions we used in our thriller, i uploaded this powerpoint onto slideshare. This is shown below;

Evaluation of Finished Production - Question one

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Analysis of our finished thriller

Today we finished piecing together our thriller and had placed the music on it. We believe that it has gone well, is at a high standard and we are very happy with it. Looking over the aspects needed in a good construction of the short film we believe we used all of them, these include;

• Holding a shot steady
• USing a variety of shot distances
• Framing a shot
• Shooting appropriate material
• Selecting mise-en-scene including colour, figures, lighting, objects and setting
• Editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer
• Using varied shot transitions and captions
• Using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task

Futhermore to make our thriller seem more realistic when editing it and placing in names of the cinematographer or the smaller characters. This was to make our film look more professional instead of repeating the same name, as it makes it look like more people were involved in the development of the film

Final Tweeks to the film

Today we finished the adjusting little things on the thriller, we tried to make it flow more naturally and look more proffessional so that the music was in time with what you could see. We made sure that all shots and transitions ran smoothly, we used dissolves and fades in a fades out on both the music and the images. This enabled the music to gradually fade out and fade in instead of changing to abruplty and not soud as good. Some pieces of music in the film increased in volume to much, however by using a tool on final cut express we could avoid this, by placing pink dots on the sounds bar we could drag them up or down increasing or decreasing the sound, this is shown below. Also some parts of our thriller was cut out to avoid it from being to long and so that we could fit the opening credits in.

Dissolve;


Final Cut Express;


Credits;

Finishing and Uploading

Today myself and ashleigh completed putting the music on the ident whilst Connor made some finishing touches to the music on the thriller. WE asked some class members what they thought of the thriller and then uploaded it onto youtube. However when watching it on youtube we noticed there was a glitch in part of it. This must of occurred when uploading to youtube, however we will have a look at it in tomorrows lesson. Now that we have finished editing and the 2 minute thriller is complete I can start evaluating our work.

Finished Product of the ident

Today whilst connor was double checking all the editing of our thriller, Ashleigh and myself added the music which i had created on Garaband onto the ident. We think they work well with each other as the image in a sense is sy-fy due to the robot which is futuristic and the music is screechy, like aliens. I think they correspond well together. Below is our finished ident ;

Adding the music

Today in class connor made the opening credits for our thriller whilst myself and ashleigh added together the last bits of the thriller. By two of us editing the thriller together we could discuss what we thought could be good or bad for the final outcome. After school we then returned to finish adding music to the thriller, we watched it all together and are very pleased with the final outcome.

New Participants

Below is a slideshow of the people involved in the thriller created on one true media;

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

1) Georgia Wigley - Protagonist
2) Hannah Sharples - Friend
3) Ashleigh Hay - Friend
4) Connor Murray - Group Member (Director)
5) Sarah Warnock - Antagonist
6)Hollie Tuvey Group member

Final version of our ident

Below is the final outcome of our ident. The music on it was produced by myself on garageband and the idea of the image was thought up by Connor. The Ident is very well arranged as the music and the image combined help set out expectations for the rest of the thriller.

Plans for today

Connor, Ashleigh and myself hope to spend the majority of the day editing our thriller, we will be editing for 9.00am to 10.35 am and again from 3.00pm to 5.00pm. We are hoping that in this time our thriller will come together and we would have put all the music over the top aswell.

Finishing Filming

Today we finished all of the filming needed for our two minute thriller, we worked quickly but proffessioinaly in order to get this done as we feel like we are running out of time. We filmed alot of this footage many times to make sure it was filmed to perfection and we wont have to film it again when editing. Here is an image of us filming;

NEw opening credits

As we have had to change some of our actors it means we have also had to change the opening sequence to our thriller.


1: Panoptic Productions present

2: A film by Connor Murray

3: Starring 
    Georgia Wigley
    Sarah Warnock

5: Also starring 
    Hannah Sharples
    Ashleigh Hay


6: Edited by Hollie Tuvey
                 Connor Murray
                 Sarah Warnock
                 Ashleigh Hay


6: Music by Sarah Warnock

7: Cinematography by Hollie Tuvey


8: Producers Sarah Warnock
                  Connor Murray
                  Ashleigh Hay

9: Directed by Connor Murray

10: LOST SIGNAL

Filming the graphic match

After school we went back to the loaction where filming was taking place and we got georgia to sit in the computer chair, we was filming her part of the graphic match which is when she is on facebook, she needed to typ a status which is a amain part to a thriller as it is how the antagonist knows where she is going, however as the status could not be seen in this part of the thriller she typed anything randomly as she kept making mistakes when doing it properly. The camera angle then changed to a point of view shot when she got a notification leading her onto her picture which we zoomed into, when we zoomed out we was in the antagonists room where he was sticking the same picture to a collage of pictures he had of her on his wall in a love heart shape. We felt this worked very well and was very effecient making our thriller look more realistic and proffesional.

Editing

Today in class, myself, Connor and Ashleigh began to edit the parts of the thriller which we have filmed. We had some very long shots of the 3 girls walking which took up lots of time, we edited most of these down to one or two seconds each. We feel like we have got a lot completed and are making much progress.

Re-preparing to film

As we had changed our main actress we had to remove all the pictures of her from the 'stalkers' room and put up the new ones of our new main character. This took some time as it was hard to get them into a love heart shape like we had before. However once we had put all the pictures up we still had time to film some of our thriller, we filmed the part where the main character was typing at the computer. This means we only have the finishing scene left to film and the part where the stalker is in his bedroom.

Below are some photo's of us preparing to film;

Filming;

Filming

Today we tried to get as much filming done as we could. We feel that we have completed over half our filming and only have a little bit left to do, we are hoping to have completed all of our filming by the end of the week.

Below are some images of us filming;

Change of Plan

Unfortunately our main actress was unable to show for filming on numerous times, in order to make filming easier and more frequent for us we changed the main character to someone who is not in our group but is reliable. We also changed her two friends to someone else who is not in the group and someone who is. Also as our stalker was being awkward to work with and hard to get hold of we had to change that role also. I took his place, and therefore in the thriller i am wearing a hoodie jumper. We had to start filming our footage again as all of our characters had changed, however this is better as we are finding filming a lot easier and quicker to complete.

Finished \product of our Visual Mindmap

We did experience some difficulties when filming this as the words n the white board could not been seen from the distance and the angle of the camera. We the tested out different camera angles and finally got a good angle, however when we started again we had the issue of the camera man speaking over what we was doing, so we had to start again. Finally we had completed it, and this is our final visual mind map.