How Did You Attract Your Audience? - Evaluation

In order to attract our target audience, we put up posters with a cool still from the film's opening sequence as an advert for those who would like to see this type of film. For those who weren't aware of the film's existence, we created a facebook page for the film and then sent invites to all our friends, and told them to do the same, so eventually lots of people would become aware of the film. As facebook is mainly used by teenagers and young adults, as well as a facebook page, we created a Twitter page to send alerts to anybody who wanted to know how the sequence was progressing. As many of the users of Twitter are within our target audience, we felt that this was a good way to reach a wider audience.

Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge the Genre's Conventions - Evaluation

Our title sequence does not try to challenge conventions in any way, as we use multiple generic triggers of the genre that are used to instill a sense of fear and increase the amount of tension in the scene, such as the mirror scene or the various POV shots.

Moreover, we use the conventional order of opening a scene, with an establishing shot opening up the entire piece, which then pans to a side alley.

Furthermore, the connotations of the dialogue intrinsically link with the thriller genre, as foreboding glimpses are given to the audience to reveal the eventual death of Tom. one example of this is given when Shira (Tom's girlfriend) is having an argument with Tom; "If you don't stop drinking like this you're going to die!" That phrase at the end is used only moments before Tom's death, showing that Shira almost knew that he was going to die and gave him a fair warning only seconds before his demise. This foreboding speech is only one of the many elements that are used in thrillers to show or foreshadow a person's accident or death.

In Addition, the black hooded jacket used by the killer is directly linked with the grim reaper and death. These two images embed a sense of fear within the audience, as death is seen as a frightening experience, and the image of a hooded black creature is often labeled as 'The Harbinger of death' which creates both suspense and fear whilst retaining all of the genre's conventions

Looking Back At The Preliminary - Evaluation

Looking back at the preliminary and comparing the work that we have done since then in the title sequence to the initial practice video we created, it is clear that my skills in both using the camera and the editing software have improved. Furthermore, not only has my ability to ensure that the 180 degree rule is not broken and that the editing maintains continuity and makes sense, but my organisational skills have also greatly improved since starting the initial planning stages. I feel this has happened because of the responsibilities that were put on me as voted by the group to be the organiser of meetings etc. In the final sequence, we felt that a shot-reverse-shot style of cutting would not have been as effective as the shot from the friend's POV that we used. The reason for this is the shot-reverse-shot method would require us to have filmed the argument from behind Ezra's back, but as this was not done easily, given the very small amount of space given behind him in the booth. This meant that the final quality of the shots of Shira on the S-R-S section were not very strong. Additionally, by doing it from 1st person, it allowed us to use the editing software to manually pixilate the picture to give the impression that they were drunk.

Although we planned ahead by creating a story board and having a shooting script, the actual story board was not accurate enough to fit the altered venue, meaning that we had to change the entire argument scene. The reason for this is that, if we had filmed in the abandoned house, the conversation sections would have been vastly different, as there would have had to have been far more people in the background, meaning we would have had to co-ordinate more people, and would have needed a different soundtrack to give the illusion of a party.

By changing these plans slightly when filming, the outcome was far better than we could have hoped. This is because the original idea would probably be too hard to coordinate and it was far more likely for people not to turn up, and that most of the people would have no acting experience.

At the start of the project, after our group had been established, there was a vote to see who would organise the meetings etc, and I was chosen. As a result I decided when and where to meet, ensuring that both I had to be organised and that I was clear in my instructions. This helped develop my organisational, leadership and verbal ability. Using this method, we managed our time so that we each completed certain pieces of paperwork by the deadlines I allocated, which meant that we had time for any missed deadlines too. Unfortunately, there were some points in which the organisation. As well as this, I also had to organise the time we were going to use the venue and then alert the actors and send them reminders.

In the preliminary, there were many mistakes made, such as not leaving enough time before or after we pressed record button on the camera, meaning there was not a lot of time between shots that we could edit out, making editing very hard, and the shots very short. Moreover, the actual quality of the shots were not greatly considered when shooting the preliminary, so only a few takes were filmed for each shot. This compromised the overall quality of the preliminary, but we learnt from this and decided that the same thing would not happen in the real thing, so we took multiple takes of every shot that we filmed in order to make sure we could find the one we wanted when editing. There were a few mistakes made during filming of the actual sequence, such as the takes that went wrong, and the dolly not fitting in where we would have liked, making the filming take far longer than it should have done, as many takes were not unusable due to the movement of the camera. Despite these problems we were able to cope with the issues and they did not have a great effect on the overall quality.

Where Would Your Product Be Shown? - Evaluation

A Film 4 production will generally be shown either at the cinema, or TV on Film 4 - the channel, or on some of the Channel 4 network's other channels, such as Channel 4, More 4, E4 etc. As a result, we were to decide what would be more appropriate for our film, the big screen or the small one.

Cinema:

Pros:

• The opportunity to go to have multiple viewing for increased revenue
• Large sales revenue if successful
• Merchandise possibilities if successful
• Greater awareness of release
• Ratings given to the film, and is seen as better than a 'straight to TV' film

Cons:

• Very expensive, and money not returned if unsuccessful
• Bad reviews will reduce income significantly

Television:

Pros:

• Bad reviews will not effect 1st time viewing figures, as very often ratings are given only after first showing.
• If unsuccessful, income is not affected as a flat fee per showing is given
• Less expensive than cinema

Cons:

• Fewer people will be able to watch it, as it may only have one showing
• Far lower potential income
• If successful, a high income is still not given.

As a result of looking through the lists and comparing the two options, we opted for a Cinema release.

"What type of cinema?" This was the next question we had to ask ourselves. Would it be a large chain cinema, such as an Odeon or Vue, or would it be a local, independent cinema such as the Phoenix in Barnet, London? A larger chain would offer a greater number of potential viewers, but would also be far more expensive. Independent cinemas have been a host to many of the great films of the past that have been largely unnoticed by the public eye. An example of this is Religulous (2008) which won multiple awards, but was still only showed in independent cinemas. After much deliberation, we decided that a large chain cinema would be more suited to the thriller genre than an independent cinema

A Vue Cinema:

.

The Inside of "The Phoenix" cinema in London

After releasing the film into the cinema, it is usually shown for about 4 to 8 weeks depending on its success. After this time, Chloe felt that a relatively swift release of DVD/Bluray would be prudent, the sooner it comes out on DVD or Blueray, the sooner people can rent or buy a copy. Conversely, I felt that a quick release would lead to a lower amount in total sales, as if a slightly longer times was waited, such as 3 or 4 months after it has left the cinemas, people are more likely to buy the film, as they haven't seen it for a while, and may want to see it again.

Post Production Storyboard - Planning/Evaluation

If we then compare this to the pre-production storyboard, it is possible to see the extent at which things were changed during the process of finding a different venue for filming and creative decisions that we made during the actual filming and editing process.

Post Production Questionnaire - Research/ Evaluation

After finishing the filming and editing of the sequence, we had a small viewing, in which we gave out questionnaires in order to find out how people from our target audience felt about the film. It was my Job to get the film ready to play onto a DVD. This was done by going into Adobe Premiere, loading the file we had created, and then when it was open, exporting it to DVD.

After doing this, Chloe went about writing up the questionnaire and Johnny was responsible for publicising the showing, by putting up posters advertising when and where it would be.

Below is an example of one of the questionnaires we gave out (with responses)

After taking all of the questionnaires in, it was then my job to put together graphs and other information related to the questions.

Responses to each of the short answer questions can be seen below

From these responses, it is possible to see that our aim at creating a Murder mystery (or "Whodunit") was not as successful as we thought it would be. I feel that due to the use of both the classic mirror shock and the fast paced editing during the stabbing made the viewers believe it was a horror film. Although this may not have been our aim, it is still possible for the film to become a horror / murder mystery such as the famous "Scream", as the actual identity of the murderer is not revealed in this sequence, nor can we even see the person's face other than their eyes.

From these results, it is possible to see that there were quite a few people (40%) who would not continue to watch this film after seeing this opening. I feel the reasons for this large number is that not all of the people who came to watch the sequence were actually fans of the Thriller genre as they only came because their friends were also going, or for other similar reasons. Moreover, if they were fans of thrillers, the Horror / Murder Mystery as a combined genre is fairly niche as it only contains two of the sub-genres of the encompassing title of "Thriller" so they may not enjoy these types of films.

In order to reassure ourselves that the audience we had shown the piece to realise who the film was aimed at, we put this question in. This question allows the audience to think "Who is this film actually for?" which is something anybody asks themselves when thinking about going to see a film in the Cinema or even to rent for DVD (or Bluray). If they don't feel that it is aimed at them, the person is far less likely to want to watch the film.

These results show us that the majority of the audience felt that the murder was sufficiently scary (3 or above), which adds to the feel of the horror element to our murder mystery.

This last short answer question I felt was one of the more important questions on the questionnaire, as in a thriller music means almost everything. Only 5% of people felt that the music didn't fit well with the scene, and of the 95% that did feel it fit, 50% suggested that it played a key role when answering one of the longer questions.

Under the long-answer question of "What aspects did you enjoy most?" most people talked about either the music or the camerawork/editing leading up to and during the stabbing, or how they worked well in conjunction with each other. This further emphasises the importance of non-diegetic sound in thrillers.