Task 7- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

I feel that over the course of the production I feel that from my preliminary task to my finished thriller opening sequence I have progress a lot.

The main task was much more in depth and complicated to do that the preliminary as in the preliminary we didn’t have to do too much planning, with our sequence already being primarily storyboarded for us, also it was not as important so we didn’t have to use as sophisticated and impressive shots or editing. Prelim we planned and filmed in one lesson and edited in a lesson, where as for our main task we had weeks of planning and re-developing our ideas, then after we had established it we then had to plan props, location and actors, our filming took an entire day and then editing took weeks to complete. The difference between our preliminary and finished task is very noticeable and I am very happy with how our finished thriller turned out.

2. I feel that my film making skills have improved from our preliminary task to our finished product, in our preliminary task the shots were basic and storyboarded for us with the option to add in extra shots if we desired. In the main task of our thriller we had to storyboard and come up with all the shots used and why we would use them, planning the whole thing, this was much more difficult as we had to plan and think about what shots to use and which shots would be effective. My understanding of different shots has also increased since the preliminary task and rather than just picking shots that we thought would look good for our final thriller, we debated as to what shot would portray our idea best for each one. I didn’t mind storyboarding as we worked as a group and got our idea and shots worked out so that it was quite easy, although as our idea got changed on shoot day slightly we couldn’t use our storyboard for our previous idea so we had to make a quick one for the new idea and plan some of the shots while we were shooting. Our editing has also improved vastly since the preliminary task in which the editing was not very flowing or correct, however I feel the final opening of the thriller is fluid and runs smoothly.

3. There is a definite improvement from our preliminary to our main task in the use of camera, we all in the group were more comfortable with the camera, how to function it and how to frame our shots deciding on what will be most effective. We took some of the original shots from our preliminary task but developed them and incorporated new shots which hopefully looked effective and fitting for a thriller. We used eye-line matches from our assassin to the targets; we broke the 180 degree rule with three consecutive shots and used various other shots in it which we did not use in our preliminary such as a tracking shot on tracks. I feel that the camera work improved considerably from the preliminary to the actual thriller.

4. The change in sound from our preliminary to our main task is very noticeable and improved; in our preliminary task the dialogue is quite quiet and does not include music or any other sounds. In the main thriller task we used ambient non-diagetic wind sound that we put in, we used dramatic music to add tension and create a tense atmosphere, put in gunshots and bangs, and also recorded dialogue which we put over the top of our video. The sound for the main task was quite hard to put in place and organise, and to fins the right sounds for our thriller but eventually we got it all together and placed them in appropriate places in the video. I feel that the sound progressed from our preliminary task to our main thriller vastly and that we have learnt a lot.

Task 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Double click the video to see our annotated one.

Task 5- How did you attract/address your audience?

How did you attract/address your audience?

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Task 4- Who would be the audience for our Media product?

The audience for our film would be a niche audience of British 16-40 year olds as our independent British physiological thriller would appeal to them primarily as a target audience. As our thriller is a crime and sort of physiological thriller as it involves murder, crimes and a mysterious plot it appeals to an audience who enjoy thrilling, dark films. The violence will charactiristically appeal to men moreso then women, and as it is a British thriller, it will appeal to British men. If we could use Vertigo Films, a British film production and film distribution company, to distribute our film this would be very helpful as they already have a British male audience who follow their films which are targeted at their audience. Vertigo makes low budget indipendent films primarily, a lot which involve crime or phycological thrillers, such as Football Factor and The Business, which are specifically aimed at British males. If we could tap In to this audience it would mean we already have an existing target audience, resulting in a cheaper advertising campain. With our advertising campain we would not need an expensive campaign which high concept, universal audienced films do, as the film would be targeted at a niche British audience, we could bypass the cinema, saving money, and make our profit through DVD sales. Advertising would merely consist of occasional screenings of the trailer on TV and cinema, minimal posters or billboards, critiques in papers, no viral campaigns or franchise, but mostly on word of mouth from our niche audience, which is the most effective advertisement. If we could distribute our film through Vertigo  we would already have an audience, save money on advertisment and make a profit back through the sale of DVDs.

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

Our film is an independent British physiological thriller filmed on a low budget production and targeted at a niche audience of British 16-40 year olds primarily. Our thriller is a crime and sort of physiological thriller as it involves murder, crimes and a mysterious plot; it is not like a high concept film as it is narrative over action. I think a likely distribution company to distribute our film is Vertigo Films, which is a British film production and film distribution company. Vertigo is an independent film company, which relies on sponsors and did rely on government funding to make its films as it does not have the money to back itself, thus making low budget niche films which are predominately targeted at British males, such as Football Factor and The Business. Vertigo creates about four films a year and I think Vertigo would be an ideal company to distribute our film for a number of reasons; it creates films with similar genre to ours, such as Pusher II, a 2004 crime film written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, it portrays the lives of criminals in Copenhagen. And the Business is a 2005 British drama/crime/gangster film written and directed by Nick Love which stars Danny Dyer and follows the Greek tragedy-like rise and fall of a young cockney's career within a drug importing business run by a group of British fugitive criminals living in Spain. The films it creates are low budget and appeal to a niche audience, which is similar to our film so I think they would be interested in distributing it as it appeals to an already present Vertigo audience which will make them money. Although Vertigo, due to a lack of budget, would not be able to create mass advertisement and marketing, the film would not need it and could rely on the existing audience and small budget advertising to suffice. Again due to lack of budget the release would be a platform rather than a blanket release, meaning it would start in a few cinemas and expand depending on the positive feedback of the film, rather than mass ‘blanketing’ of all cinemas which high concept film companies such as Warner Brother Pictures who have the money, do, appealing universally with their high action films. The more probable alternative would be for our film to go straight to DVD as many of Vertigo’s films go; this saves the expenditure of cinema which is expensive and is more suited to a widely appealing film. Although Vertigo are typically independent, they are starting to expand and evolve into distributing and production companies such as Warner Brothers who create High Concept films, Vertigo recently released Monsters, a 2010 British science fiction film, which was a high concept film, and also Street dance 3D which is another high concept film which featured in cinemas in 3D and created a large back profit. I think that Vertigo Films would be a great distributing film company to give our finished film to too distribute as the physiological thriller film fits in with the produced Vertigo films and would appeal to an already existing Vertigo niche audience, meaning that we would not need a high budget advertising campaign as our target audience already exist and we would make our profit most probably through DVD sales rather than through the cinema.

Task 2- How does your product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller we do not have specific social groups as there are only three people in it however we have tried to stick to stereotypes of the social groups that we do have and tried to make them look typical. Our two targets are meant to be a rich, successful upper class couple; we have represented them as a rich by the clothes they are wearing, the house they come out of and their car. This is a social group, also our assassin is based on the stereotype of an assassin from differnt films, the stereotype of an assassin is dressed in black, looking menacing and determined to make the kill.

 

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

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

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Saturday, 5 March 2011

Account and evaluation of shoot day

I feel that our shoot day went surprisingly well considering the circumstances the group was in; our idea for the thriller had been changed a lot prior to shoot day and improved and by shoot day we had planned, storyboarded and arranged props and timings for the shoot, however when we got there in the morning and discussed it finally with our media teacher Matt, he decided the plot would not work to film and so we had three hours to rethink and change our idea before shooting the thriller. As a group we had a brainstorm and rethink about our idea which was originally having a Prime Minister assassinated from an upstairs window of the school, surrounded by extras being reporters and press, we had to simplify this idea down considerably and finally came up with the new plot that our Prime Minister and wife would leave the country house they were staying in and walk to the car, a man standing on the edge of the car park would then walk up to the Prime Minister as he got in the car and assassinate him publicly, afterwards then shooting himself. The plot was more simplistic meaning we could have more creativity with the shots and editing we would use; once we had decided on this we went and collected the new props we would need and we found a new actor to portray the assassin which luckily was easy. Although we now had the idea of our thriller, we did not have time to storyboard or plan in depth the shots and running of it so we were slightly underprepared to go straight into shooting it. As we still had time before the shoot we practised some shots of our assassin in the studio and learnt how to assemble and use the tracks, creating a tracking shot of our assassin, we also decided on some of the basic shots we would use for the film.

We started our filming at mid-day roughly, starting with establishing shots of the location and close ups of our assassin, creating the scene to film in. We experimented with various shots and tried focus-pulls and breaking the 180 degree rule with the assassin which went well in my opinion and we had soon collected a number of easily useable shots which we were all happy with. As we did not have the Prime Minister and wife ready at this time we just focused on getting establishing shots of the country house and close ups of our assassin to cut from the Prime Minister to. We did have some problems however as it was a very cold day which meant the battery drained very quickly on the camera so we had to change it, also it started snowing which was very unhelpful in filming as we had to cover the camera, and for continuity as we had to make sure we did not get too much snow in shot in case it stopped snowing later when we continued filming as that would ruin the continuity of the opening sequence. Luckily the snow was not too bad and so we managed to get a few more shots which worked before we went in to take a break from filming.

When we returned to filming, our Prime Minister and wife were ready to be filmed and as we had already filmed the establishing shots we could start straight away on completing our shots, starting with the tracking shot which we used to reveal­­­ the killer is waiting for the Prime Minister and his wife and that he has a gun, a vital shot in the opening sequence. As this was an important shot we had to properly set up the tracks and scene first, we got three wooden boards to line the floor to make sure it was a smooth surface, and then set down the tracks on top, making sure they were parallel and the camera would run smoothly across them. After this was set up we did some trial shots; as we were shooting this shot in slow motion we had to do some trial shots and practise as there is only 3 seconds of filming so we had to make sure we moved fast and timed the shot well, we set up our actors in their places and tried out the shot three times until we were happy and knew what we were doing. The filming of the shot went very well but we did it twice just to be on the safe side, after this we disassembled the tracks and started on the other shots in the thriller. Close ups of action between the Prime Minister and his wife were all also shot in slow motion, to juxtapose the shots of the assassin, this meant that we again only had 3 seconds of shooting time per shot as it was filmed in slow motion, which proved to be a difficultly however we did get a number of good shots to use from this which was good, after capturing all the wanted shots we now had to film the actual assassination of the Prime Minister. This did not prove as hard as I thought it would as we decided to use only one handheld tracking shot of the assassin rather than many shots from different angles, as it would heighten the suspense of the assassination and create unease. We repeated this shot many times as it was quite hard to time it right and to get a decent shot however we finally got one and repeated it to be safe, we were all happy with the assassination shot however we also wanted to get a close up of the shooting in case we wanted to include this instead of the full tracking shot so we filmed that also. When we had finished that and got a close up of the dead assassin we felt that we had got all the shots that we would need for the thriller and were happy with what we had filmed so we decided to call it a day, we packed up the camera and tripod, tracks and wooden board and took them back to the media room.

All in all I felt that the shoot went very well, although it was not the idea that we planned we were doing, and we were using more improvising than planning, we as a group pulled it together and got all the shots that we needed to create a good thriller in my opinion. The cold was obviously a problem and there were a few continuity issues in some of the shots due to the snow, also another problem we experienced was, as we were filming in a car park, cars were coming and going and it started to fill up which was a problem both continuity and space wise, it did not affect any of our shots although we did have to cut slightly short because of it which was a slight problem. Despite these inconveniences, the shoot day went very well and I am looking forward to starting the editing process and putting the shots together.

Filming the establishing shots and close up's of our assasin.



Our establishing shot and us setting up the tracks to film with.



Our location to film in and us filming one of the shots from the thriller.