Evaluation Task 3 - What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

Our product isn't really specifically high or low budget, this is because it can work with either. Such as a film like horrible bosses, it did have a budget of around $35k but it could have done with a lot less (excluding the actors) there aren't any crazy action scenes or any advanced CGI. Having a $35k budget for our thriller would definitely improve it but the story doesn't require it.

My group and I are hoping to make the title sequence seem like it could be a high budget film, but it could equally be a medium and even low budget film. The entire film would probably seem like a medium to low budget film. So it would probably have a distributor such as Vertigo Films, Kaleidoscope Entertainment or even Warp Films. Also by having these types of companies distributing our product I think they would help us get more sales, because they would probably be aiming to be getting more dvd/home purchases then in the cinema. Which makes sense since this product probably wouldn't be for a wide audience unlike American Beauty which would be with its comedy. Our product does have similarities to it, such as the dinning sequence in American Beauty where the family is pretending to be perfect and have no problems when in reality there are many.

If our product had an unlimited budget the main thing we would probably spend it on would be actors, as I find this would make the most significant difference to our product. The rest takes pretty regular equipment. We will try to make the location look as classy as possible but this still doesn't require a high budget.

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

My product represents a couple of particular social groups, in my product there are two parents and four teenagers. The parents  are white, middle class, middle aged, have a boy and a girl, dressed as expected by a middle class parents and stereotypically are stable but in our product we subvert the stereotype and make the parents extremely unstable. The teenagers follow their stereotypes, both guys are aged 17-18 and both girls are aged 13-15, all white. Dressed in typical school wear, we wanted to give of the impression that they were getting ready for school.

Here is a picture from our shoot of the dad (on the left his son and daughter):

  

Evaluation Task 1: In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products

On the left is a shot from our thriller, this is when the father starts his rage. The other gif is a shot from American Beauty, also where the father starts his rage. We had a close up of a father to emphasis his facial emotion, much like in the other gif.

On the left is another gif from my thriller, this one is a close up/long shot of the father. My group and I wanted to give of the impression that he was completely zoned out. On the right is a gif from breaking bad, they were trying to do a similar thing. They used a tilt instead of a close up but I still see similarities.

Getting An Idea Of Target Audience

To get an idea of what film genres people in my target audience are into I went out to Nyon ( a village in Switzerland) and asked people two super basic questions (not including asking for names and ages). Firstly we asked what is their favorite genre of film, secondly we asked if they liked thrillers. Even though most of them said they enjoyed thrillers none of them said it was their favorite genre, most said that their favorite genre is action or comedy.
After discussing with my group we agreed that 16-25 should be our secondary target audience as teenagers and young adults watch thrillers but it tends to not be their favorite genre. Our thriller is also based more on this struggle that the father is going through, this makes the film more relatable to fathers and mothers. This adds to the feeling of this film being for an older audience. We agreed that our primary target audience should be 25-40.
So I will be interviewing people in this age range, I expect this will be less of a hassle as English people tend to not mind being on camera as much. I was aiming to get at least 20 interviews on the day of my first interviews, but as I discovered on that afternoon people in Switzerland mostly really dislike being on camera. 

Account Of Editing Process

Today I finished editing my groups thriller, here is a screen shot of the final product on adobe premier. On the top left we have our folders with all of our footage and audio. In the bottom we have our timeline, this is where we can move the footage and audio around and edit them, in the top middle we have effects and some other tabs and in the top right the live preview.

Here is a title I was working on. My group and I later decided that having text during the sequence would take away from the fathers mood. We were planning on having the other titles fading in and out from both bottom corners on the table. This could give us some issues as this zone wasn't part of the title safe area. The title safe is a box that outlines where the text should be so that it is seen on all (or at least most) screens.

Below is a close up of our timeline, the light blue bars and everything above is footage and everything below the light blue bars is sound. The bottom two lines are sound effects and music we put in to add tension, this is for when the father is on his rage, At the very left we can see two pink bars, these are the titles that fade in and out before the footage and audio.

Account Of Shoot Day

In the morning of the shoot I was very confident, especially with all the preparation that our group had done. 

The only thing I wasn't sure about was the actors, I had never met Simon before and he played a major part in the production of our thriller as he was the father. I also hadn't seen Molly (acting as the daughter), Katie (acting as the girl guest) and Clare (acting as the mother) act before. I wasn't disappointed by any of the actors, they all did a great job in making the shoot look like a real life family with friends over and not simply actors saying lines. On the right there is a gif of a couple seconds I filmed when I wasn't on the camera. Phil did a particularly amazing job acting as the furious father. We were lucky with the weather, we didn't really need to have sun light even though the sequence is meant to be in the morning as it could just simply be a cloudy morning. I do find that the natural light looks great. Our actors also did a great job dressing as asked in the props list, all looking formal and like they are about to go to work or school.

On the day of the shoot we went to Adam's house and cleared his table and the widows to make everything seem very clean and perfect. I think that the table and dinning room really fit what we were looking for. Which was basically your stereotypical eight seat family table in a family dinning room. 

Here is a picture of the kids talking about the previous night before the father arrives.

We used a tripod for all of are shots, for most of the time the camera wasn't moving. For the shots where the father looses it and he goes crazy on the kinds I applied some follow type shots where I would try to keep up with were his face was and where he was facing. So if he turns to the left to start insulting one of the kids on the left I would radically move the camera that way so the audience can get a feel of this pressure being aimed right at the kid. I also applied some shake to the camera movement to make the moment feel unstable. 

Overall I was very content with the shoot, great actors and location and I think my group and I did a good job directing the actors.and working with the cinematography. 

Dexter

Dexter:

The opening sequence for Dexter is in many ways relate-able to our product idea. We would like our title sequence to give of the impression that everything the characters are doing is normal but that it doesn't feel normal. Such as when Dexter is shaving, obviously shaving is a normal thing to do, but with the use of super close up and sound it feels painful watching him shave.

Research: Credit Order

Se7en Opening Credits:

I find that the opening credits for Se7en are really well done, it doesn't contain anything particularly scary but comes across as freaky. A lot of it consists of shots of paper and books, many with black lines covering information. Of cours one of the first names that we are going to see come up is Brad Pitt, which is smart as by seeing this actor that most people recognize the viewer might be more intrigued towards seeing what Brad does in the film.

Storyboard #3