My progression from my preliminary task my full product

At the beginning of the year I made my first production, the prelimary task. This was a very basic shoot of a conversation using different camera angles. Since my preliminary task I have progressed hugely. In my thriller I have a montage which took hours of editing whereas with my prelim I had no idea how to edit and the proccess was a lot longer than it should have been and even then the cuts werent perfect. Now my editing is smooth and easy as I have spent so much time in the editing suite. In september we had no preparation for the task and used props that we found on the day whereas my Thriller took lots of preparation and we brought in our own props and hat to set up a set with a greenscreen with three tier lighting. We also set up in various locations like the woods, next to a dustbin and we even set up a stage area for the presenter of the show.

For our prelim task we had no preparation and had to use the props that we found in the editing room, only minutes before filming. For our thriller we had weeks of preparation. We organised what props we needed and we made a storyboard which went throughout each shot we were going to do, ordered and detailed. In contrast, for our prelim task we played it by ear and just shot lots of different shots and hope that it would look ok.  Planning everything made filming a much quicker process because we knew what shot angles we wanted and therefore didn't need to film the same scene more than once.

My prelim task was extremely basic and its only feature was its dialogue. With our thriller we tried to sell through the visual. This required lots of after effects and also skilled editing to make the montages look visually spectacular. To do this we had to spend a lot of time thinking what kind of effect we wanted and then we went into after effects pro and took all the green screen shots and added fire in the foreground and background to give it a dangerous feel to the thriller.

When doing our prelim task I needed help setting up the camera, e.g. putting up the tripod and adjusting the white contrast. For our Thriller we rememberded everything we needed to do and set it all up. After the camera was ready to film we set up three tier lighting so that there would be no shadow on the greenscreen. With the prelim we used no extra lighting and we didnt do any editing to alter the look of the lighting, the background etc. whereas with our thriller we spent a long time changing contrast an brightness.

I did absolutely nothing to change the sound of the dialogue in my prelim task. However most of my time spent editing my thriller i was doin sound and music. I had to choose the music I wanted to use and then encorporate it into my thriller. To do this I had to use soundtrack pro and then import the edited version of the music I wanted into final cut pro. We also had to go through the sound of each clip that had dialogue and choose the right sound channel and then shange the volume to match the rest of the thriller.

One of the hardest parts of editing was using After Effect. This took a particularly long time because we had so many green screen shots. I mastered after effects pro quite quickly and I was soon able to add fire and explosions and gunshots. My prelim task did not require any after effects.

Reaction of our audience

What do you think the basic plot of this thriller is?

• plum o'keefe - a tv show about people who are voted in through hatred challenging to kill eachother
• Izzy Macloud - like the hunger games, TV program about people at the bottom of society killing eachother
• Mina Hambro - a gameshow where bad people kill each other
• Liza ietukhova - Story about people who took part in a show. very good.

What do you think are the key strengths of this thriller and why?

• Plum O'keefe - Music and characters
• Izzy Macloudm - the bit with the presenter walking down the stairs and the bit with the gun is good.
• Mina Hambro - The writing explaining the characters when they talk about how they feel
• Liza Ieutukhova - Interesting plot. editing. Intrigues audience.

How do you think this thriller could be made more effective and why?

• Less lens flare around sunshines speech
• Have a better presenter voiceover, more titles to make it feel like an opening?
• Bloood when guy dies. An audience?
• It could be less funny, if the aim was to make a thriller. More serious

My feedback

I think that the comments made on our thriller have been mainly positive. We were worried that a lot of people wouldn't understand the concept of the film but in the comments everyone said they knew what was going on. The negative feedback is mainly things that we could have improved with more time. Sunshines voice ended up a bit fuzzy and this was impossible to fix so I understand why there are some comments about that.

Attracting our Target Audience

Attracting Our Target Audience

Target audience of my thriller

Here is an example of the type of audience our thriller will attract.
This is Tom Simpson. He is a 17 year old boy living in London. He lives with his Mum and Dad and his two older brothers. He is a big football fan and has an Arsenal season ticket. In his spare time he plays the UFC game on Xbox 360 and watches TV. Tom likes to watch "Top gear", "Total Wipeout" and "I'm a celebrity get me out of here. His favourive films are "Battle Royale" and "Dark Knight".

Friendly Fire is goin to have a young male target audience ranging from 15-25 years old. Our secondary audience will be arthouse fans. We feel that our film won't particularly attract a global mainstream audience because it doesn't have the conventions of popular films like The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes etc. Our film mocks reality TV and therefore will attract both those who watch reality TV and also those who dont like it. Because  our film parodies relaity tv we feel our film may well garner column inches in the press that would enable us to reach a larger traget auience as people would be intrigued by the concept. A lot of people would like to see a film where the hated people in society get shot. This includes people like Jeremy Clarkson and most of his fans who agree with his views. DVD sales of this film will be high as it is an arthouse film, attracting an older audience who watch films like Harry Brown. Ultimately though our film is more likely to appeal to a niche target audience it would definitely attract younger people as our film is voiolent and in many respects promotes violence and a form, of a dystopian future. It would certainly appeal to fans of video games like Grand theft auto. Our secondary audience of arthouse fans would be attracted to it through its parody of reality tv and we would attrract them through giving away free tickets in broadsheets newspapers as a way of promoting the film and creating a good word of mouth buzz. Another way of attracting an audience would be to attempt to astroturf and create a viral buzz in the same way as The Human Centipede this is an effective way of promoting a film and targeting an audience.

Institutions that might distribute my film

The company we have chosen to produce/distribute our film is called “Warp”. This is a small British company specialising in films with social realism, making socially realistic films like “This is England” and “Four Lions” and cheap thrillers like “kill list”. Friendly Fire is going to a low budget film about reality television therefore making it perfect for this company. “Warp” can market our film through advertising on TV through their connections with other companies such as film 4. We chose a British film company because Britain had excelled in reality TV and is a big part of British culture. Warp target a niche British audience and with Friendly Fire we can hope for a lot of viewers because there is a large audience for reality TV programmes like X-Factor, I’m a celebrity get me out of here and celebrity big brother. Friendly Fire will mainly target a male audience between the ages of 15 to 35. Films like “this is England” and “kill list” have been successful by targeting a niche audience similar to the one of friendly fire. Warp often sell their distribution right to European companies in order to recoup costs and make money for the film. We feel that this will benefit to our film because it will enable our film to reach a European audience. Warp like different films and we feel that our film would be accepted as it is an original idea, something that has never been done before. Warp take risks in low budget films that target a niche audience as do Film 4, both these would be involved in the distribution of the film to its audience. Film 4 could also help promote the film by running trailers on their channel and also showing the premiere on Film 4. This would be advantageous as premiering the film on their channel would enable to charge more for advertising rates if the film had received critical acclaim and by charging for advertising they can recoup more of the costs from the expenditure on the film.

How does our product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller we resorted to stereotyping characters such as ASBO’s, illegal immigrants, smokers and other groups victimised in society. Our disgraced ex-politician is represented as an upper class man from a wealthy up bringing. This is signified by his smart clothes and briefcase and the large building he walks out of. Politicians are looked down in society because they are all stereotyped as corrupted hypocritical liars. In our thriller we see Mr Paxton reluctant to be part of the show and refusing to have interviews. This signifies snobbery, another stereotype often linked with upper class and politicians.

El Hadji is an illegal immigrant. He is interviewed outside while eating his food, he says “Only god can judge me” and does a prayer. This conforms of the foreign stereotype of being dependant on religion. Eating outside also suggests that he is not wealthy enough to eat out at a café or a restaurant so has to take his own food everywhere.  El Hadji and Mr Paxton are both realistic stereotypes. I researched Chris Huhne, the ex-cabinet minister who put points on his wife’s licence. Typically, similar to Mr Paxton in our film, he tried to avoid all the journalists. People like El Hadji are seen everyday in the real world.

 

Smoker/depressed: Depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults or about 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. Everyone will at some time in their life be affected by depression -- their own or someone else's, according to Australian Government statistics. Not a lot of the media addresses this problem or portrays it within films. This is the reason we decided to add someone with this disorder into our thriller as we wanted it to reflect people in society so the audience connects with them, not just what is typically shown within the media. Smoking is a hugely discussed topic within different media as it also affects a large number of people and also affects the life span of most people, making people panic about it. About a third of the male adult global population smokes. Smoking related-diseases kill one in 10 adults globally, or cause four million deaths. By 2030, if current trends continue, smoking will kill one in six people. We wanted to address the fact that smokers are becoming outcasts in some social situations because of the damage it does to them and the people around them. In social situations, they have to be abolished outside to smoke, away from the group of people. This view on smokers is just going to increase as more and more people quite as the group may become an undesirable minority. We wanted to show the social group of smokers as a negative thing because of the damage it has on peoples lives ands wanted to show people that if they didn’t stop they would soon be outcasts.

Homeless single mother: There are 3 million children living in a single parent household (23% per cent of all dependent children). Single mothers are often portrayed badly as they are stereotypically seen to 'sleep around' and not be very good mothers. The single mother in our thriller is portrayed positively as she is the winner so obviously smart. We have not made her too revealing so does not seem to 'sleep around'. We also made her out to be trying to be a good mother as she is going onto the show to earn the money for her child who she is clinging onto in some of the shots. She risks her life in order to make a better life for her child. We wanted to show her positively because we feel people views on single mothers are unrealistic. Single mothers are often made scapegoat for all that is considered wrong with society, they are shown to be a folk devil for the moral panic of what is wrong with Britain, why Britain is failing.

61,000 households (excluding the intentionally homeless) in England were officially recognized as newly homeless by their local authorities in 2010. We added the fact that our single mother is homeless because we wanted the audience to feel sympathetic towards her. We also made her homeless as, again, we wanted to make her seem like she would do anything to get out of the situation that she is in and also make her life as bad as possible to show that she deserved to win the show. We wanted to show that people in this situation are desperate as homeless people in England are often not portrayed to an audience, this could be because of the fact that the government often causes people to be homeless. We wanted the audience to see that there are people in Britain that are homeless and need help to get out of that situation.

In what ways our product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

Our thriller conforms to the generic conventions of a thriller and a reality TV show. We carried out a lot of research on reality TV shows like X-factor and we analysed the opening sequence with the montage and the voice over. This was very influential to our opening montage as we used it as a template. At the very start we filmed a gun, a generic thriller convention, and we had text to emphasize the voice over as seen in many other TV shows.

Here is our logo that we made on Photoshop. We did this to conform of the reality TV show expectations of having a logo, like X factor and Big Brother have. The new film called the Hunger Games is a similar film to ours and also has a logo which looks a bit like ours. In the background we can see someone about to shoot a gun. This conforms to the forms and conventions of a thriller.

This is a picture of one of the contestants in the opening montage. We used the fire and the black background as well as Freddie holding the gun to conform of the generic conventions of a thriller. The montage conforms to our expectations of a reality TV show or competition. However there isn’t usually fire and guns in reality TV shows so that means it subverts the dominant ideology of a show like X-factor.

For our thriller to have a reality TV sub-genre, we needed a presenter. We used LED lighting on the stairs, a spotlight and upstage lighting, as seen in the picture. These features conform of reality TV show expectations and subvert to thriller expectations. In the background we added cheers to add to the TV reality show feel.

We filmed Ella (Last year’s winner) in a bin as she is hiding from an opponent. In this shot it is evident that we are using a handheld camera and she shouts to the cameraman to get out the way. The fact that we are filming her with a handheld camera makes it similar to Big Brother as we are documenting every move that the contestants make. This conforms of the form and conventions of a TV show. The gun conforms of the thriller genre.

Short interviews with our contestants were cut down significantly so that the thriller wouldn’t drag out. The short comments made introduce the character. There is also text that appears to the side of each contestant saying what they are in for and a little fact about them. In other TV shows there are always interviews introducing the contestants so we did the same.

Our group watched some videos on YouTube of X factor previous winners coming back on to the show as guest appearance. We noticed that the previous winner is always shown as a hero and has a big montage. The music in the montage contrasts with the images. The music is emotional and is similar to the type of music you hear when there is sad back-story in X factor. It then builds up as Ella kills more people and then climaxes when she shoots the last contestant. This conforms of the form and conventions of reality TV and Thrillers.

Ella tells the story of her last year. She talks about her journey from being a scared, homeless, single mother to being an out an out viscous killer. This copies conventions from shows like Britain’s got talent, except instead of singing she is talking about killing, conforming of the dominant ideology of a thriller. 

The final scene shows Ella jumping out of the bushes and shooting the last contestant. Because of the nature of the film killing is seen as a routine so the audience, instead of seeing Ella as a bad person, are happy that she has won and killed the last person. This conforms of thriller expectations because in thrillers you see people die all the time and think nothing of it.

Editing task

Before we started editing we watched all of the shots and we marked each shot as either "best", "good" or "alternative" and left the clips that we definately werent going to. At first we just wanted to put together a very rough version of the whole thing that we could tweak as we go on .We decided that we were going to start by making the opening montage of the contestants in the show. We began my adding to two short clips of each contestant  doing an action that suited their character best. We used one close up and one medium shot for some variation. As our thriller progressed we changed this montage to try to shorten it. We experimented with lots of different techniques like having quick close-ups with a short gap between each one. Next we started editing the interviews. When deciding which clip was best we had to look at the lighting and the sound. After this was over with we linked them together and added text to show who was being interviewed and two small facts about each person.

Being a reality TV show, our thriller used a lot of contiuity editing devivces. We had two montages, the first one introducing the contestants  consisting of each contestant doing actions in front of a green screen and the second montage was of the winner of last year. This was a montage showing her killings from last series and therefore had a lot of match on action. These editing devices are conventions of thrillers therefore we had to have some to make it less like a boring TV programme but more like a thriller

There were two mics attatched, one attatched to the camera and one was handheld. Therefore we had to choose the sound channel which sounded better so I used some good headphone and went through each clip only listening to the sound. Once I had removed all the bad sounding bits I then doubled the good sound so the voices would sound loud and clear. We also had to add a lot of sound from sound cut pro. First we chose the music for the intro. It was quite difficult finding music that would fit for a reality TV show but we eventually found an up-beat soundtrack perfect for our thriller. In contrast, the music for the end montage had to start slow and build up till a climax. This soundtrack had to be heavily edited so that it would be synchronous to what was happening in the montage, so the music would reach its high point when the homeless woman wins the show. After this we added noises such as audiences clapping and gun shots. We faded all the music and the clapping to make it sound less disjointed.

I found the editing hard, but enjoyable. Our thriller was the most time consuming because there was so much to edit. I found the software (final cut pro) easy to use after spending a long time in the editing suite. I did a lot of work on our thriller in my spare time, spending time on it in lunch and during my free periods. Most of my time was spent on editing both of the montages and editing sound. I think that our group worked very well together and we all took an active role in editing.