Evaulation Question 4 - Who would be the Audience for your Media Product?

We want the target age range for our film to be 15- 25, as can be seen from the results of our first questionnaire the majority of people who answered were in the 11 -17 age bracket. As people aged 11 - 14 would not be old enough to view our film, since it has a 15 age certificate we decided to hold a film screening accompanied by a questionnaire, for people aged 15 - 25. We will show them our 2 minute opening and then present them with a questionnaire to see if they would like to watch the rest of the film and find out if so why or if not why not?

Below can be seen a copy of our questionnaire that we handed out to everyone at the screening.

Questionnaire

Please feel free to leave a comment under any of your answers.

What is your age?

☐ 16-25

☐ 26-35

☐ 36-45

☐ 46-55

☐ 56-65

☐ 65+

Have you seen any of the following?

☐ Vertigo (1958)

☐ Silence of the Lambs (1991)

☐ Se7en (1995)

☐ Mr Wrong (1996)

☐ Drive (2011)

☐ The Woman in Black (2012)

What is your opinion on psychological thrillers?

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

We will now ask you some questions about our opening.

Did you understand the opening?

Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Did you like the ident before the start of the film?

 Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Did you like the titles/graphics, in particular the way that they look and the way they are positioned on screen?

  Yes ☐                         No ☐

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Would you want to see the rest of the film?

   Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

If not why not, if so why?

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

We managed to have a good crowd at the screening, filling the room, with each group bring 5/6 people to watch our film openings. It all went smoothly, the openings played one after the other with our audience filling in each questionnaire after that film was screened. Here is photo of everyone deep in thought as they worked their way through the questions.



After the screening I collated the results, displaying them graphically in charts, to make them visually appealing, so easy for an observer to understand.

• As can be seen from these results, similarly to the result in the first questionnaire, psychological thrillers are extremely popular in the 15 - 25 age range, which is very helpful as our film fits well amongst this genre.
• The majority of people could easily understand our thriller and those two who could not it would likely become clear in a second watch or if they were given more than just the first two minutes to watch.
• Most people commented positively on both our titles and ident, giving us feedback such as "I LOVE THEM" and "they are AMAZING"
• Finally 93% of our audience responded that they would like to see the rest of the film,  commenting on our effective methods of building suspense and intrigue, which has been our goal create from the initial idea, as tension is needed in any successful thriller.

Overall it can be seen from the results of our questionnaire that we have chosen the correct target audience 15- 25. This is because not only would the majority of them be open to the idea of the film, since a large percentage of them enjoy psychological thrillers, but they appear to be intrigued enough by our opening that they would actively want to watch the rest of it, if given the chance.

Evaluation Question 3 - What Kind of Media Institution might Distribute your Media Product and Why?

Here is a power point I created to look into the pros and cons of six different distribution companies, to see which would be the most beneficial for our film.

Evaluation Question 2 - How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Our media product shows the representation of gender and age, in the struggles that all young girls go through in todays society in simply walking home by themselves. The paranoid nature of the main girl, while can be viewed as extreme, it is common amongst people of her demographic in this day with terrifyingly high statistics of muggings and rapes on the street. 1/5 Women will experience some sort of sexual assault in their lives with 30% of them experiencing domestic abuse. As well as this mugging rates are nearly reaching 400,000 a year across England and Wales. In contrast to our representation of the victimised young woman we display a negative male representation of the malicious man with harmful intentions. Our decision to dress the male all in black immediately highlights him as a dangerous figure and someone to be vary us, especially as the audience is not able to see his face, giving him a sense of humanity. This stereotype of men being dangerous whilst women are always the victim is actually very incorrect in todays society with 2/3 of mugging victims actually being male.

To display this information creatively and look into similar films who have also tackled the topic of stalking with a variety of genders I have created a short animated video which can be found here.

My free trial for the animation software has now ended, to access it please log in using the following
Username: emma.3000@btinternet.com
Password: alleynsmedia

Evaluation Question 1 - In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

I have made a prezi to compare my film opening to real films that have made use of similar techniques as my partner and I did.

Certification

Classification of a 15 According to the British Board of Film Classification

• Must not endorse discrimination
• Drugs may be shown, but may not promote them
• Should not focus on how dangerous, harmful beavious such as sucide could be copied
• Very strong language is allowed
• Nudity is allowed if there is little detail when it is in a sexual context 
• Sex may been shown and referenced but not in strong detail
• A strong threat is allowed as long as it is not of an extremely dark or sadistic nature
• Violence can be strong as long as it does not linger on the infliction of pain

We had originally planned for our film to be a 12A, but it it is clear to us now after filming that the strong messages of threat and mugging conveyed would raise the rating up to a 15. This is actually beneficial to us as the majority of people in our questionnaire said that a 15 was their preferred age certificate.

Finished Film

Here is the final cut of our finished 2 minute thriller opening

Editing - Titles

We used After Effects to create all of our titles, using their built in track points so our titles followed the camera movement. We used the same font as for out end title, True Lies, in red, adding to the limited colour in the film, putting emphasis on them as they contrasted the black and white behind. We had several difficulties with the titles, such as with our main actor's name, as it is  "Ruby Ballantyne" which was far too long too fit anywhere in the opening, so after trying many places without success we were forced to make the decision to change her name so it would fit in. We also deliberately decided to not give a credit to the actor who played the following man to add to the feeling of uncertainty whether he is really there, or simply a figment of not only the young girl's imagination but yours too as the viewer.

Editing - Colour

My partner and I had the challenge of removing all colour except the girl's red coat and a few other chosen red objects. This proved to be far harder than we had expected because of all of the other slightly red objects such as buildings and skin tones in the background of nearly every shot. We counteracted these problems by having to use a series of multiple colour and shape masks in every shot, to restrict the red to only the few places we wanted it. This initial problem did give us the idea to leave in the occasional other flashes of red, for example leaving in the red bus and postbox. This adds to the style of the film and is a constant reminder of the imminent danger.

Editing - Soundtrack

My partner and I used garage band to create a soundtrack to our film, we imported a low resolution version of what we hope to be the final cut of the film into garage band then began to create the music, to match the edit. We first added two different bass lines which we looped throughout to create a base layer for us to work on, picking out two of the default built in loops. We then added a drum track which was once for looped. Finally we composed our own melody using a variety of string, brass and woodwind instruments, making sure for the brass to come in every time St. Pauls is revealed to the audience. We also used the music to pick out crucial parts of the film, by adding a key change when the follower is revealed to the audience. Finally we added a memorable jingle to go over our ident at the beginning and created a creepy, eerie sounding ending to go on top of our title.

Rough Cut 4

Here is our fourth and final rough cut

What have we done since the last rough cut?

We have focused mostly on the sound

• We have mastered it all, making it sound far more appealing to an audience
• As well we have synchronised all of the diegetic sound that was recorded after the main filming 

Also we added a large amount of shape masks into multiple shots to make sure the coat is the sole thing in colour, apart from a few carefully selected other things

This can be seen here...
Before

After


Finally we sorted the shot of Ruby's feet, deciding to make part of the shop in the background in colour, to ensure we had some red in every shot
Before

After


Final Things to Improve

The same as in the last rough cut we still need to

• Add the rest of the titles
• Fix the shade of the red