Question 7 - Thriller Evaluation

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

Due to being in a large sixth form there were people in my media class that I had not met or worked with before. During the preliminary task I had been put into a group with three other members; Harvey, Billy Symmonds and Billy Clayton who I had not yet had the chance to speak to or work with. I felt this was a positive element of the preliminary task as it allowed me to develop my communication skills and team working skills both of which were transferable to the thriller film. I learnt the skills needed (communication and team working) thanks to the preliminary task when working on my thriller production, I was able to listen to others and form ideas with others as well as take on board any criticisms of my ideas. This was helpful when coming up with the story line for The Pursuit because we were able to combine our ideas together as well as giving our own view on each others ideas about how they could be improved etc. The class members with which I made my thriller film with were two good friends of mine therefore communication and confidence was not an issue.

During September of 2013 when I first started sixth form and I began work on the preliminary task, I had very little knowledge on specific terms and wouldn't have know the techniques and skills acquired to produce a short film. This is quickly changed as I began to learn about camera angles and shot types, I learned such things that a close up shot was used to convey the emotions of a character and also to engage the audience, I also learned that a long shot would be used to establish a location and that a low angle shot would be used to enforce power on an individual and make them seem as if they are looking down on people. I had also learnt such techniques like the 180 degree rule, which is a basic rule that means that two characters should always have the same left and right relationship to each other, when a camera crosses the axis connecting two subjects its called 'crossing the line'. This technique is used to avoid causing confusion/disorientation for the audience and this technique was used when filming our preliminary task and were able to incorporate it effectively showing progression.

180 degree rule.

The use of generic conventions weren't needed when filming for the preliminary task however they played an important role when filming our thriller film. Generic conventions help to establish the genre of the film, examples of generic conventions of a thriller film would be claustrophobic surroundings, powerful male characters and isolation.

One of the most worthwhile processes of the preliminary task was learning to use Adobe Premiere Pro because prior to this I had no experience on how to operate it and edit footage to produce a short film. This part of the preliminary task gave me the knowledge to do basic functions on the software, enough to meet the demands of the task. I learnt a variety of different things such as how to use video transistions such as dip to black and how to string clips together in order to give flow to the film. I also learnt how to insert basic titles. These basic lessons in how to use Adobe gave me a starting point from which I would move onto to be more complex with my editing in the thriller film.


An example of Adobe Premiere Pro

After the preliminary task I had to complete a number of case studies, looking at the openings to several thrillers in order to analyse the generic conventions used/challenged in the first sequence. When making a thriller you have to use intertextual references and meet general expectations of a thriller film and also to challenge certain generic conventions of a thriller with intrigues an audience. I completed case studies on 'Jackie Brown' and 'Kill Bill Vol.1'. Overall I feel that there wasn't nearly as much to write about as for The Pursuit evaluation. As many aspects of a film in general were missing from my preliminary task e.g. soundtrack, generic conventions. However my thriller opening required a lot of these aspects to be analysed further and in greater depth as some aspects of thrillers are very meaningful but can require quite a lot of research to understand. This is what I feel i have gained over a year of studying Media, I now know what an audience wants to see and aspects of what makes a great thriller film. I feel that I have massively improved my knowledge of thrillers through research and in class analysis which is useful as it involves everyone in the classes feedback. I also feel that teacher feedback has been very useful as the teachers have great knowledge and experience in the media field and I know for a fact that their advice given was beneficial. Overall I am very pleased with the opening I have made for The Pursuit as it I feel it is a rather skilled piece of work compared to that I made of the preliminary task. 

Question 6 - Thriller Evaluation

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

I was able to use different forms of presentation to vary my blog posts in order to give variety and keep it interesting. For example for Question 1 and 4 for my thriller evaluation I used a power point presentation which allowed me to divide and split up certain sections of the question, allowing me to expand my thoughts and bring a structure to my post. I uploaded images of my thriller storyboard through a scanner located on my home printer, which scanned the photos and sent them direct to my computer allowing me to post them onto my blog. I also used screenshots of my thriller film to upload clips and photos from my thriller and preliminary task so I could evaluate these state the effect of each shot and why it was used.

Power point form used for question 4, then uploaded through 'Issuu'

An important aspect of the shooting/production days was that we all knew where to go in order to shoot our film and what time to be there. To ensure this process was easy and stress free we used our mobile phones to keep in contact with each other and if any problems arose such as not knowing where the location was or being late, we could guide each other through it, for example Toby didn't know where Anglia Square was located in Norwich therefore I was able to go on my maps on my Iphone and give him detailed directions. We also used the social networking site Facebook as this allowed to create a group conversation where all three of us were involved to be made aware of the arrangements for filming and to exchange information about our shooting schedule. 

                                                                                      

Large capacity, small size SD card.

Maps app located on an iPhone

I used an SD card to store all of our recorded scenes for our thriller film, this SD card enabled a large capacity of storage on it which meant we could record a lot of footage and then narrow it down to the best footage we would then use for our final cut. This SD card was small in size therefore portability wasn't an issue. We only recorded one issue to do with the SD card throughout our filming stage and then later resolved the problem with the technicians at CNS sixth form and found it out to be a formatting issue which was quickly resolved.



I uploaded clips through YouTube for me to later analyse and use for my case studies, this was done through embedding and then sharing to the desired location (Blogspot). This allowed people viewing my blog a knowledge of the clip and where I got it from. Many other websites were also used to support different aspects I had included when analysing a thriller. An example would be IMBD (Internet Movie Database). Through this website I was able to gather all the necessary information about a film such as cast and awards. IMBD also suggests related films which can help with research. I was also able to see user ratings to understand the demographic that enjoyed that film the most and what reviews that had written which allowed to see if my views had been expressed before. YouTube also allowed us to find the soundtrack we used in our thriller film. This allowed us to view soundtracks that had previously been in thriller films and came up with a list of other suggested 'original thriller soundtracks' from which we found our desired track.



When shooting our thriller we had access to the Canon Legria which is a digital camera. This was useful as I had knowledge about how to operate this device and had done so before. This digital camera also allowed us to view footage through its built in screen therefore we didn't have to wait until we got back to sixth form to view the footage and see if it was what we wanted to achieve in that shot. Canon is a well known brand therefore we had faith in the quality and reliability of the equipment; as a result we had no problems with the camera. We also used a tripod for some of our scenes, this allowed us to keep the camera still, focused and at a certain height.

When editing the thriller film we had to use a number of different effects, I have used editing formats like iMovie before on iPad but never the editing format; Adobe Premiere Pro. We used black and white to represent a flashback and to show the difference between the present and the past. We also did several other effects throughout our thriller film such as freeze-framing, dissolving, dip to black/white and inserting a soundtrack. In order to upload my soundtrack it meant I had to use my USB stick in order to import it onto Adobe Premiere Pro. The soundtrack was then adjusted to fit in with the film. We also had to insert titles into our clips and this meant we also had to choose a font for our titles which meant using a specific tab on Adobe Premiere Pro.

Question 5 - Thriller Evaluation

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

In order to gain an effective feedback for our thriller opening; The Pursuit, I decided to hand out questionnaires to people after they had watched the film. This meant that I had to something to refer back to and I had a real source of feedback. Our audience demographic is 16 - 18 year old white British males. This is because all of our characters in The Pursuit are of this ethnicity.  I decided it would be best to ask both females and males in this age group to watch the film and then answer the questions afterwards because it would give a fair representation of the audience that found the film most appealing and why, this was a useful thing to do as it allowed me understand exactly what the demographic identified with when watching The Pursuit. It was vital to gain feedback from males as they were our target audience therefore i chose to gather questionnaires from 2 males and 1 female, all three being between the age of 16 - 18. Images of these questionnaires are shown below. On purpose I got questionnaires off participants who were fully ranged between 16 - 18 years old. One being 16, the other 17 and the other 18, this way I was able to gain feedback from the complete target demographic not just people that are of my own age.

This questionnaire was completed by a 17 year old female, fellow AS level Media Studies student. I chose to give a questionnaire to a female to see if it also appealed to that gender as it is a male dominated film. 

Questionnaire completed by a 16 year old male. 

Questionnaire completed by an 18 year old male. 

When evaluating the answers I had given to me, I find found they were mainly positive with only a one or two negative points. This shows that The Pursuit was well received by the audience. The Pursuit had a circular narrative which is a more complex and complicated narrative structure, our circular narrative included the flashback that Tobias had. We wanted to create a slight sense of confusion within the audience and wanted to engage their brains so they had something to think about making the story line more complex and intriguing. This was successful as no one rated understanding the narrative as 5, they rated it as two 3s and one 4. Despite our circular narrative the audience were still able to hold their attention on the sequence therefore this shows me that the narrative wasn't too circular and the audience were still able to follow what was going on. On two occasions the participants who filled in the questionnaires put that they found it difficult to understand who the murderer was, this was pleasing as we wanted to create confusion about who the murderer was throughout further portrayed through the characters enigmas. However next time to improve we could make it clearer about who the murderer was in order to create a story line that is easy for the audience to follow. One negative point was that we should "render character walking up stairs", this is when we have a close up of Tobias' feet and there is a pause and it immediately skips to the next scene, this was a technical fault, to improve we should have rendered that particular shot in order to keep flow and movement and to stop the film lagging. 

One aspect of our thriller film that was rated highly was the camera work and editing. Two of the participants rated this section a 4 and one a 5. This shows that the way we shot and edited our film made it more attractive to view and more intriguing to watch. We would have liked to of use a more high quality camera which would have allowed us to shoot in 1080p HD form but unfortunately this resource was not available to us. We had to use a camera provided to us from school which couldn't of given us as clearer or crisp picture as a HD camera would have but regardless we used a wide range of camera shots/angles to appeal. This was emphasised in the section where the participants answered what were the best features of the production and in all occasions camera work was circled and on two occasions editing was. This clearly shows that our editing and camera work played a big part in attracting the audience. We tried to keep the editing quick and snappy to keep the audience engaged and a vast majority of camera angles/shots to give variety to our audience and so that it didn't become repetitive and boring. 

An over the shoulder shot just one example of the many camera shots we used. 

Another successful element of the mise en scene that the audience felt was engaging was the soundtrack that was used alongside the action. I made to sure to research and listen to the type of soundtracks that had been used in our thriller films such as Kidulthood. When talking further to some of these participants about our soundtrack they had said that it helped to build tension gradually as the film went on and also helped to set to set the pace for the action. It was particularly good at creating sudden moments of tension and suspense due to its vast rise in tone such as the moment when the title for our film appears on screen. When the participants were asked whether the soundtrack effectively reflected and enhanced the mood & action, all three said yes. 

The audience may have been attracted through the way that the characters costumes reflected much of what the youths of today are seen to be wearing. This may have enabled the audience to identify with the characters more due to their similar attire. For the characters of Holly and Harry we took slight inspiration from the films 'Ill Manors' and 'Kidulthood' as these are gritty British thrillers and was able to capture the sort of social class that may be attracted to our film. Tobias' costume was based around a typical teenager, as in a fairly scruffy look that hasn't taken much effort to arrange. This creates a sense of confusion as Toby is the character that looks least threatening yet is arguably the most dangerous character. The target audience should have been able to identify with all three of the characters as they are British males aged between 16 - 18; therefore all three characters represent the target demographic we were trying to reach in The Pursuit. 

Our cliffhanger acts as a hook for the rest of the film. The audience see a hand appear on Toby's shoulder and are left wondering whos it is and also another shot of Toby at the end leaving the audience wondering if Tobias was infact the murderer. We used a cliffhanger to ensure the audience wouldn't lose interest in the action and would want to continue to watch the rest of the film. This also helped to provide many unanswered questions and a burning desire to know where the plot goes next. 

Overall the participants rated The Pursuit an 8/10, clearly showing that the film was able to attract our target demographic that we had originally targeted through the use of certain generic conventions such as location, soundtrack, camera angles/shot types and character. 

Thriller Evaluation - Question 4

Question 3 - Thriller Evaluation

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

In order to distribute our thriller film 'The Pursuit' I would approach a film company like Revolver entertainment. Revolver entertainment have released a few relatable films that are similar to The Pursuit such as 'Ill Manors' and 'Kidulthood'. These two films also share the same target demographic of 16 - 18 British males as we tried to achieve with our thriller film. Revolver is one of the UK & Eire’s leading "All Rights" distribution & production companies. At revolver entertainment's core is a spirit of pioneering innovation that has led Revolver to achieve a catalogue of industry firsts. It is an ethos that informs every aspect of the business and one which is most evident in the unique approach taken to managing its enviable slate of edgy theatrical and home entertainment releases. In the past 10 years Revolver's independent spirit and flair has been awarded with 18 of the industry's top awards for marketing excellence. 

 

User Ratings for 'Ill Manors'. Females under the age of 18 gave Ill Manors the highest ratings. Unfortunately due to a drop out from Holly Bergman, we are unable to gain a female actress which would have been helpful as we could have had an ambiguous female character which would have attracted a strong female audience.

User Ratings for 'Kidulthood' yet again show strong attraction to our target demographic.

Revolver Entertainment distribute their films both nationally and internationally as they have studios and offices set in both London and Los Angles. Our thriller film would perfectly suit Revolver Entertainments ethos and distributing style, Revolver would ideal distributors for our thriller; The Pursuit aims to target and reach a British audience of 16 - 18 year olds and so Revolver would know the techniques in order to achieve this using previous strategies from Ill Manors and Kidulthood which did just so. Revolver Entertainment have had a large amount of success throughout the years with a variety of their films such as 'The Imposter' and 'Offender', backed up by the Bafta won by The Imposter for outstanding debut and winning best doc at the London critics circle film awards 2013. Revolver distribute to cinemas and also release films on DVD. They don't just cater for the UK, catering for USA and other countries dotted around Europe, this means that we would have the option to distribute The Pursuit internationally, so if our thriller became successful and gained acknowledgment it could be shown in other countries that may be interested in the thriller genre of film. The success they have had with their independent films such as Ill Manors gives me great confidence that they will be able to make The Pursuit another great hit.


Another big asset of Revolver Entertainment's is their digital distribution. Revolver's means of distribution would be able to effectively distribute our thriller film into cinemas across the nation and possibly internationally, not only would they be able to do this but also be able to distribute our film online to a wide range of companies and social media sites. For example revolver have a very successful YouTube channel with links to Love Film Netflix and many more. Our thriller film would fall under the category of an independent film, emphasized by its use of artistic camera angles/shots and it's puzzling and thought provoking editing style. Leading on into the point that Revolver would be the ideal company to work with on our thriller film as they would have worked with smaller, independent companies before on fairly low budget productions. This is useful to us as our film would fall under these categories and the fact that Revolver have produced such low budget films before gives us confidence that they would have knowledge and experience of how the film industry would react to these types of films. A film that Revolver has distributed before named 'Ill Manors' had a micro-budget and was shot for well under £100,000. This film is similar to ours in a few ways, in that some of the surroundings used in our thriller film are similar to that used in Ill Manors, in the form of derylict buildings and gritty streets. Revolver would recognise that The Pursuit has similar features and is in the same style to films they have distributed before. 

http://www.revolvergroup.com/uk/ - Link to Revolver Entertainment's official website.

To distribute my thriller film via TV, it would be distributed through Film 4. The reason for this being that they specialise in independent films and show a range of films ranging from mainstream to independent. They also short films and productions that they have produced themselves. The fact that they specialise in independent films, would give The Pursuit the chance to show on their channel, they are a well known film station so our film would hopefully gain acknowledgment and be viewed by many. They also specialise in short films which could be useful for us as if it short in length. Film 4 also have an official website containing information about what they do and their TV listings for the upcoming days/weeks along with reviews of their films and a demand service so its easy for people to catch up on what they may have missed. 



Cinema City would be most likely cinema to show our thriller film. This is because they are a cinema that specialise in independent films and are known for showcasing them regularly. Cinema city would more open to show The Pursuit than say Odeon cinemas because it is a short film and Cinema City have hosted events for many short films over the years. Cinema City say they aim to show a vital range of films therefore this would help to convince them as we are supporting their statement by giving them the opportunity to show a diverse independent short film. They are maintaining to show independent cinema, foreign cinema and art house type programming. This is England, distributed by Warp Films, is an example of an independent film Cinema City have shown. Cinema City has an obligation to provide education and this would link well with our production, seeing as it has been made for an AS level coursework project. Cinema City would be good with helping young people to screen their films, especially those in education because of their policies and dedication to helping educate young people about films.


Cinema City, Norwich, Norfolk.


Cinema City Film listings. The listings are stated on the website a week in advance and are updated daily.


Uploading our thriller film onto YouTube would be a useful marketing strategy. This is because well known and successful film trailers are uploaded onto YouTube to market the film. Films that people may be searching for may be in a similar category to ours i.e. independent British thriller, therefore when searching for this they shall receive what they searched for but on the right hand side will be listed other suggested and similar films such as ours, this will encourage people to view our product. Another reason why YouTube would be useful to us is due to the main users of YouTube being within our target age range; 44% female, 56% male with 12-19 being the dominant age group operating on YouTube. Distribution and promotion can also be aided by the use of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Both of these sites have access to an extremely large audience, with a big proportion of users yet again being in our target age demographic, due it being free to create a page, it would be easy to distribute/promote our film through these two sites, these social media sites have applications that are available to people through mobile devices which means we are able to broaden the audience we want to reach. Through social networking we would have the option to advertise our film, for example creating a poster for our film could greatly help in distribution/promotion. An advantage of creating a Twitter/Facebook page is that it may well have a word of mouth effect, people who enjoyed the film could tell others and recommend our film so that we gain a larger audience. Again the age range of the audiences using these social networking sites are in the age range of 18-24. 



If we were to use Video on Demand (VOD) services it would mean that we are broadening our distribution services allowing the chance for a wider variety and bigger audience to view our film. It is also a more efficient way of distributing our film compared to the classic DVD release as DVD sales have gone down hill shown by many stores closing down nationwide such as HMV. On the other hand VOD services such as LoveFilm and Netflix have seen a rise in the number of people using their services.