Silent (Mysterious) Betrayal-Opening Sequence

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

http://youtu.be/D9FJzKx5XLI

Question 3 - What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product? Gabriel Preston

Question 4

A full breakdown of demographics and market segments from the UK film councils survey contends that the thriller genre is the 4^th most watched genre of film amoungst the general public of a base of 2,000 people which 53% of that number said they enjoyed watching the genre. A more detailed examination into the figures shows that there are more people of both genders over the age of 35 watching thriller films than of that under the age of 35. 

Since 1995 to 2012 the thriller genre has generated 15 million dollars in revenue for the US box office leap frogging popular genres such as Romantic Comedies and Horror. This is testament to the expansion of the crime subgenre, which is producing more high-octane action than ever before. Our film defiantly incorporates this element mixing tension with action having been influenced by films such as Taken and Man on Fire both of which have been massive success at the box offices. A Crime Thrillers are usually targeted at more mature audiences hence the increase 15% increase in the over 35 category watching Thriller films. Having seen the increase I think that there is an emerging market for the under 35’s and it is for this reason I have made my target audience 15-30 year olds.

Typically a thriller films maintains a 15-year age cert due to its use of strong language and violence. Although in my films opening sequence there is not a lot of that there is more to expect later on as the plot progresses. 

In 2008 Taken drew nearly 150 million dollars in gross profit, its original profit being 26 million dollars. The film conducted extensive market research to inform and engage their target audience something, which is key to the films success. Rated at a 15 cert by the BBFC this movie targeted an audience of 15 plus however it primary focal point looked at 17 year olds and above as the character of Kim is a pre adult who is abducted. The films simple but effective plot and the role Bryan who is the father of his abducted daughter was clever has this allowed producers to market the film to males in particular fathers. Bryan who is middle aged presumably in his 40’s uses his career skills set as an advantage to the extent of saving his daughter. I think that this appeals to men of and between 25-45 because it shows commitment and an interest in protecting your family.

ABC 1 demographic is perhaps the most generic form of profiling audiences via social grades and ages and its what the majority of hollywood films have reverted to in terms of marketing the product to different social grades and age groups which the demographic is based upon. Traditionally the common perception of young men aged between 16-35 would be that they enjoy watching films containing action. Additionally the prominence of males in the film could also be an attractive proposition to males and especially females especially teenagers of the age of 15-21. Our film especially retains this element. Its not just young men but young adults in general are a lot more focused and drawn to intense storylines as there’s a lot of narrative enigma’s in crime films as this is evident right from the start of the film.

What I find stereotypical about crime films is that they are mainly focused on men. With my film Silent Betrayal females can identify with the main protagonist Lucy’s struggle for freedom against her captors, which is fitting to this new image of women in action and thriller films and upsurge in female’s playing major roles in such films. This is why I think that the film could be marketed towards the female under 35 categories. Also the prominence of males in the film could also be an attractive proposition to women also. 

Furthermore looking at the graph shows us that women would prove statiscally the most profitable of the two genders as females tend to go to the cinema on average more than men with 1,168 visiting the cinema over the last 3 months in accordance to the UK film councils cinema attendance frequency from a base representative sample of 16+ people from a concentration of 2,208 people proving that women enjoy the cinema just as much as men do. This could allow us to market our film more towards females as Lucy is the main protagonist in our film and she would be the who the audience could identify with and root for.

To conclude my film will target the ages of 15-30 of both sexes. This is a film, which does contain a mixture of elements that appeal to the conventions of the genre. The films incorporation of high-octane action could make it I think a favorite amoungst those who are over the age and between the age’s of 15-30. The inclusion of a young cast with the exception of 2 or 3 characters who are over 40 will be an extra incentive for the audience that I am trying to attract whom are teenagers.

Evaluation question 5:How did we attract/address our audience ?

There are many different ways to attract an audience for your media product ,we used our opinion of the most effective way to attract our target audience which was to produce a high quality film.we firstly identified our target audience which was a similar age group to us young males and females generally older teenagers this was a suitable target audience as our cast was generally made up of teenagers and young adults therefore we believe that our audience will be able to relate to this situation represented in our film opening sequence as we have all heard of young teenagers being abducted through media such as the tv news or newspapers.

To make our film suitable for females we had to use a main character which is joyce,your average teen girl, we also got approval of this factor as we created a questionnaire asking teenage girls if they would prefer to watch a film without female characters? this was our results as you can see 75% of girls will prefer to watch a film with a female character playing a vital role in the production.

we had also done our research into the thinner genre and the sub genre that would most appeal to our target audience is clearly crime thriller and by using this finding we built our film from this factor.

Picking our cast for our movie was also a factor that can affect who is attracted to the film for example the majority of our age group (class) had seen kidulthood which has a majority of teenage actors and is a well known film among teenagers in london,so we mainly choose teenage characters for our main roles as its proven that audience is attracted to actors of the same age, to add realism to our film we couldn't use teenagers as all cast such as the news reporter had to be a middle aged man so we decided to use mr hobbs to appear in our production 

Additionally we researched factors that attract an audience and another very important factor we incorporated in our film was using the same location as our target audience,by filming all our scenes in london the film was given a better sense of realism towards our audience as this would be an area where our audience will know well.

our establishing shot is taken from outside glaxosmithkline in boston manor a well known building in the Brentford area.

when we finished our opening sequence we also further attracted our target audience by posting the video onto one of our members personal Facebook page as Facebook users are mainly teenagers this helped us gain criticism which helped us further develop our film ,

as you can see over 40 people viewed our final product and even 6 took the time to comment and interact with us,this feedback is very important as it could show weather or not your product appeals to your target audience additionally this feedback helped identify that our sound needed to be tweaked as some viewers stated that audio in the film couldn't be heard throughout especially in the abduction scene as the background sound from the motorway nearby overpowered our actors voice , we therefore recorded our audio on an external device and inserted it into our project through iMovie.

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

  

   We have learned about technologies throughout the entire construction of the opening sequence to our film; from the hours spent doing research to production, through to the post-production.
The overall process was a new experience in terms of the new technologies we used. Throughout the making of our opening sequence, the equipment used required different skills and process. The process of constructing this media product consisted of different elements such as the blogging aspects as well as the research conducted and finally the final filming part to it.

  

    One of the primary experiences was the blogging side to this task, due to the fact that we had not encountered constructing coursework and research in this form before. Therefore, the skills developed in this were presentational as well as practical in terms of how to present and show that we can use media skills to represent our research. Blogging was a huge part towards our research and planning, as we instantly had to post our findings on to the blog in order for it to be marked.

 

   

The use of the Internet has shown us how to collect appropriate information necessary to include in our product. During the research and planning stages before making the product, we learned a lot about what the internet had to offer. The internet offered a vast amount of information on past and present thriller films, clips of films going all the way back to the 1960's, which would not have been easily accessible with a lack of the Internet for websites like YouTube. 

  The research was done mostly through the Internet in order to learn about the forms and conventions as well as further research into audience and synopsis ideas. This eventually consisted of acquiring the skills to embed and share necessary footage and clips found in order to support the research and information collected. Compared to when doing the preliminary task, we found the use of the blog a lot easier once we felt comfortable with how it operates and how our work should be presented.

    The planning aspect of the process highly consisted of being able to represent and show in our coursework where our location is and who our cast are. This was done all through being able to embed images onto the blog. This process required our IT skills which enabled us to use technological convergence via mobile phones to send our research to our computers and then post on the blog. 

   The research stage of this process required countless uses of technologies such as Using YouTube and Google (which we were already familiar with) to research thriller films, their conventions and sub-genres, we harnessed both websites to conduct a full examination of the genre. The specification for our film stated that we could not use copyrighted music, and therefore we needed to find a source of suitable, non-copyrighted music to use in our media product which we did through the free play music website.

 

After analyzing the equipment we learned to use from our preliminary task, the use of them has become more understood by each user. The fact that the SD cameras are portable, miniature and user friendly have made it easier for amateur producers like us to be able to produce decent footage with this equipment such as the camera as well as the tripod.  In terms of the technology of the camera, the negative factors of it was the minimal control we have of certain things: these include the auto focus and auto white balance which can change the sense of some scenes recorded from different angles - we have seen this happen in some of our practice footage. The auto white balance seemed to be lagging sometimes during to work through this, we created adequate lighting so that it doesn’t change as much filming from different angles.  Other negative aspects to keep in mind are the quality of the footage, which evidently affects the quality of the film as a whole. As well as the built in sound system that we had to work with which quite frankly had poor quality sound, we also decided prerecord some of our dialogue to ensure it was as clear as possible to the audience.

   The final process of producing this product was the post-production stage where the elements were separated into three steps: uploading and organizing footage, adding transitions then including sounds. This process was all done on Adobe premiere pro CC software which was new software for all of us. Therefore the use of this technology required some getting used to and exploration into what we could produce with it. All of our filming was imported into Premiere pro. Adobe premiere is not a free. Therefore, it is considered to an industry standard if not the best. It is aimed at the "Pro-consumer" - whereby the users are producers and consumers.

There were positive and negative outcomes with regard to using the Premiere pro, analyzing the benefits would be the format we could create with it. Through our experience, we have found that the most beneficial aspect of the premiere pro is The software is non-linear and non-destructive, which means that clips can be edited around experimentally without any permanent damage also that all editing and all footage uploaded is instantly saved without having to press save at the end of each session. 

How Adobe looks

Example of an early stage of post production, we used adobe after effect to create the typo text

    This prevented us from losing work the various times were our laptop died because of low battery or froze because of pressing a wrong button. However, this software was suitable for what we wanted to do with the film. In addition we used After effect to create the typo text and windows live movie maker to create the opening titles. 

    Moreover Adobe premiere has 100s of useful and helpful contents. The software has preloaded sounds, scores, files, transitions and effects. This makes the production easier and user friendly as most steps are straightforward. However the only negative aspect is that it can be a little slower compared to its competitors. While the interface itself is user-friendly, it can be a little sluggish at times especially with less powerful machines. There will be occasional delays here and  there no matter what machine you are using. 3D editing is also non-existent.