Evaluation Question 4

What would be the audience for your media product?

Primary audience
Young adults between the ages of fifteen to thirty- We chose fifteen years as the minimum age, as this is when young teenagers begin to mature and therefore, they would be able to understand our psychological thriller more easily. It is the pleasure of working out an intellectual puzzle that should attract them to our film. We especially look to target the female gender; however, the film overall is largely targeted at young couples because as well as consisting of thriller/horror conventions, it also features elements of romance.

Secondary audience
Lovers of the thriller/horror genre who often like to receive the emotional pleasure of being thrilled. Those who belong to the ‘cultural community’ of thriller/horror film fans would immediately be able to recognize the repertoire of elements shared by these films and therefore will identify them within our film as well.

Other
Audiences of different ethnicities, especially those Greek background may also be a potential target audience for our product based on the fact that our actress is Greek and elements of Greek culture may be evident throughout our film.

To see how successfully we managed to target our audience we recently held a screening at school inviting those aged fifteen to eighteen to see their reactions to our product and as expected both males and females enjoyed it very much. Overall, the boys gave it an average of 8/10 and girls gave an average of 9/10, which ties in with our idea of initially targeting females with our female protagonist, but also the males. I also held a screening at home with family, mainly cousins between the ages of twenty to thirty as well as my nineteen year old sister and parents in their forties. It too produced similar results, and although my parents enjoyed it, they mentioned that they think the film is not made for them, but a younger audience, which is true.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?
In order to attract both our primary and secondary audience, we spent a lot of time on the visual image, including the mis-en-scene and characters.

Attracting young adults (15-30 years)
-We specifically chose actors aged seventeen who looked quite mature for their age, so that a wide range of people within our target age range could relate to them.
- We used make-up such as thick black eyeliner and red lipstick to make our actress look older
- We used the smart dress code of a black jacket and grey trousers to make our actor look more mature
- The genre of thriller/horror itself should attract young people as our audience screening showed that horror is one of the most watched genres amongst them followed by comedy.

We attracted Males by:
- Using a female protagonist whom they would be sexually attracted to due to the shower shots
- Portraying the male’s vulnerability and playing on their fears of being dominated by the woman in a relationship, which they fear will make them feel like less of a man and therefore more insecure. This would make them suspicious as to what will happen to this male character and how he will react.

Our audience screening showed that males did enjoy our opening sequence as all of them said they would like to watch on.

We attracted Females by:
Using a female character who they can relate to as she is:
- Image conscious and therefore applies a lot of make-up and paints her nails
- Sophistiticated, which is clearly portrayed through the mis-en scene during the pan of dressing table on which there are candles and many red accessories.
-They may also be attracted to our film due to the fact that women are portrayed as more powerful than men subverting their stereotypical image as the victim in many horror/thriller films such as 'Scream' (Craven, 1996).

We attracted Young Couples by:
- Using references to red to connote love through the iconography such as the red rose
-Suggesting elements of sex and romance through the nude shower shots and candle lit dinner
-Overall, we used a very ordinary setting that is relatable to everyone in order to suspend their disbelief so that they perceive the film to be real.


Attracting our secondary audience (horror/thriller film lovers)
We did this through conforming to audience expectations with our use of genre conventions such as:
- Low-key lighting
- Eerie music
- References to red
- Characters (victim/villain)
- Most obviously the iconic knife

I think our opening sequence will invite in even more genre fan viewers as whilst audiences often like to be ‘in the know’, once introduced to the big twist in our film, it may arouse even more suspicion as to what this female killer is going to do next and why, and therefore they will watch on. In our audience feedback questionnaire, a female aged 17 has said 'I am interested to see what happens to the man', which is what we wanted to achieve.

In this way, we also attracted our audience by addressing their fears of the effects that psychological illnesses can have on people. It is especially terrifying to see how an ordinary woman that seems to be performing her daily ritual of getting ready, in fact transforms into a psycho who is preparing to murder her boyfriend. This may leave the audience feeling anxious and even suspicious about those ordinary people around them.

For effect, we used a build-up of suspense through the slow-paced editing style leading up to the shocking climax. We emphasised it by using slow motion when the knife is picked up giving the audience time to react. Being thrilled is all part of the viewing pleasure and audience feedback certainly shows that many were shocked when the female character picks up the knife. Therefore, this sort of climax can attract our audience by generating visceral pleasures.

Evaluation Question 6

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

The production of our film opening has been a great learning process as I have become much more confident with filming and editing technology. I have kept a record of the whole process on Blogger, which is another skill that I learnt making it easy to communicate with the group and present findings and reflections.

The test shoot was extremely important as I got the chance to refresh my camera skills and experiment with new hardware.

Hardware we used:
~Sony Mini DV (Digital Video) camera- which I can confidently set up and I am also aware of making sure that the batteries are fully charged before each shoot.

~The tripod- This helped us shoot steadily from different levels.

I have also developed my camera movement skills becoming smoother with my pans and tilts and more controlled with the zoom. One thing I learnt was that it is not a very good idea to use zoom as it causes pixilation and so the image deteriorates in quality, making it look less professional. This was a great problem for some of our lipstick shots, which we could have used, did we not zoom.

~External mike and headphones - These were extremely significant in our production as filming outside meant that it was essential to listen out for background noise such as cars, alarms, building work etc and work around it.

~Dolly –I learnt how to connect this to the camera as we considered using it for a track shot, however the passageway we wished to shoot in, was not wide enough and therefore made it impractical. This was unfortunate as the Dolly ensures a much smoother and quieter track than the chair we attempted to use.

~Pag light- this was useful in enhancing our shots, creating different effects depending on which filter was down. After our test-shoot we were able to see how much the lighting adds to the quality of our shots and made better use of it for the real shoot. We also created our own light with lamps and candles.

All this equipment was portable and therefore made our job much easier, especially when shooting outdoors.


Software
In Post-production I was able to develop my skills on the edit suite learning many new skills when using the editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro. After the Test Shoot, I learnt how to capture and record the shots from the video tape to the computer.

-I also learnt how to crop or using the razor tool, cut shots and place them along the timeline in a diagonal manner. These were the main things I needed to know about non-linear editing. However, in order to make the sequence more professional I learnt many new skills about adding effects and transitions such as the cross dissolve during the establishing shot, and the fading of titles using the ‘key-frames’.

- I also learnt how to adjust the brightness and contrast on each of the shots using video effects as well as the speed and duration in order to add slow motion on our final shot.

- Adding text, resizing and adjusting the colour was an essential skill as it was needed to add the credits, which ran throughout the entire sequence. I also learnt how to upload new fonts to the programme from the site dafont.com

- Using Audio effects, we were able to lower the treble to take out any camera sound.

We also added the non-diegetic sound track on the audio track along the timeline, where again key frames came in use when adjusting the volume during the conversation. For the conversation i was able to learn how to unlink the video from the sound and synchronize the diologue with the lip movements.

The software we used in fact had a lot more options that would help enhance our project and make it look more professional, however due to the limitations of our knowledge we could not use it to its full potential. All these processes however, were ones that I had not used before and therefore I have definitely developed my basic editing skills.

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?
Since the preliminary task, I feel my knowledge on planning and constructing a successful continuity sequence has really increased and I have especially come to know the importance of each stage in the process from pre to post production.

Planning
-Initially after reading the brief for the preliminary task, I was sure it would be quite simple, and I did not think much planning would be needed, although we did produce a rough storyboard, script and shooting script.

This planning made us organised and efficient.

-For our film production, we recognised that due to limitations of time, location, availability of actors and the weather, planning needed to be in much more detail.

-We also had to think about locations and actors very carefully and did some recces near and around our homes whilst for the preliminary task we were limited to locations within the school grounds.

Research
Our film brief like the prelim required us to construct a continuity sequence but one that specifically follows the form of a film opening sequence and the conventions of a certain genre.

-For this, we needed to research both genre and film-opening sequences, which was essential to enhance our sequence.

-Our prelim production was quite plain and boring with normal students in a classroom having a short conversation. Looking back at it and researching into real film openings, we learnt that in order to enhance our sequence, we needed to think about presenting our characters with appropriate costume and make-up, and choose a suitable location.

-We also learnt how important the mis-en-scene is in order to create the right mood and paid a lot of attention to it >>

-As well as the visuals, it would have been better if we had paid more attention to the dialogue, as audience feedback shows whilst the set, characters and music were the most liked features of our sequence; the dialogue was the least liked factor. If we were to produce our film, the script would need revising.

Production
- During the production itself however, we found the that ‘sound check, camera-check, camera rolling…action’ process we learnt during the preliminary task was extremely useful in making sure everyone and everything was ready before we took each shot. This process became natural making sure everyone was ready with whatever they were doing as we often swapped roles within the team to gain experience with different technologies.

- One aspect we definitely improved on was leaving time at the beginning and end of each shot before we said ‘cut’ so that it gave us space to cut the clip when editing, in order to create a successful match on action.

-The test shoot proved to be extremely helpful as we could see how our idea works in our chosen location and whether we were being too ambitious or not. For example, after the test shoot we were aware that a track through the hallway would be impractical as sliding a chair with wheels on carpet was very unsteady and the dolly was too wide for the hallway. All this meant that we did not waste the actors’ time when they arrived but knew exactly what we were going to do and how. Therefore the test shoot proved to be essential.

-During the prelim task, we sometimes found we had a lack of good shots to choose from, as we had not done enough takes. Therefore, for our film production we took many takes of each shot so we had good range of shots to choose from.

-For continuity reason we also had to make sure that every time we took a shot, we put everything back in its place so that there isn’t a jump of objects between shots without ellipses. For this, we decided to mark the positions of a few things with a chalk.

Editing
I have also learnt a lot about editing as this time, not only did we have to order our shots in a continuity sequence, but we also had to add titles, effects and a soundtrack.

-I have certainly improved my skills on using the editing software Premiere Pro, and especially learnt about ways to enhance shots through audio and video effects

- I learnt how useful the storyboard was when editing, as we knew exactly which shots to drag out the box, place on the timeline and trim, according to the shot number we had given it during the capturing process.

Sound
During our prelim, we also found that sound quality of the conversation was not so good. Therefore, for our final production we decided to:

1) Record the voice separately using a microphone
2) Synchronize it to actor’s lip movements on the editing software
3) Lower the treble on audio effects, to get rid of camera sound, a factor that stood out in our prelim production.
4) Record some atmospheric sound to replace the camera sound and make it more realistic.

Evaluation
Finally, when evaluating our preliminary task, we watched it as a class and our feedback was very much based on our media knowledge. Whilst this helped us improve our media skills, we were not able to see what a real audience would think of our product. However for the final product we got feedback from our target audience with a large number of non-media students therefore we could get a better idea of what our audience would really think about our sequence, and how we could improve it in the future. Therefore, the audience screening was very useful!

Overall, I have learnt a lot more about each stage in the process of filmmaking from planning to producing and finally evaluating. I have also learnt the importance of working as a team, sharing roles and learning new skills from each other as we spent a lot more time together unlike for the preliminary task.

Audience Feedback
We held a proper screening this week with people within our target audience and I think it went extremely successfully. We had a turn out of about 40 people and gained much constructive feedback:

Here is a summary of our findings:
>15year olds: Overall liked the set but disliked the dialogue

>16 year olds: Liked the music but disliked the dialogue

>17 year olds: Liked both the music and characters but disliked the dialogue

Here the common trend is that most people liked the music the most and liked the dialogue the least.
-Overall we received an average of 8/10 from the boys who all said that they would watch the film

-We received an average of 9/10 from the females with a few 7s however many of the girls were not very fond of the horror genre.

I also held an Audience screening at home with my cousins aged 20-30 years.
Both the males and females gave it an average of 8/10. This shows that it appeals to both males and females from the older end of our target audience too. Some quotes from my cousins were:

‘The girl looks evil’ Female (aged 22)
‘The final shot where she picks up the knife looks really good’ Male(aged 19)
‘The final shot is over-dramatic’ Female (aged 24)
‘The music is really good!’ Male (aged 19)

Overall, everyone suggested that the dialogue could have been better. We thought the dialogue would have helped the audience make sense of what was going on but it seems that the cross cutting made the relationship between the male and female obvious enough. If we were to re-make the opening sequence we could either get rid of the dialogue or improve it. This is something to keep in mind for the future. Other than that, I think the screenings were definitely a success and I am extremely happy as most people really enjoyed our sequence and we received much positive feedback.

Audience Feedback
Yesterday Alice, Mel and I had a very productive group meeting about audience feedback and our screening session. We drafted a questionnaire, and decided on our roles for the session. I am going to be standing at the door inviting everyone in and handing out questionnaires whilst Alice will do the briefing speech and Mel will be in charge of the technological side. Alice is also going to set up a facebook group on which we can invite the people we want who conform to our target audience (young adults-over the age of 15- and those who enjoy thrillers). We will also keep individual screenings at home to get feedback from family and friends from out of school.

We have decided to hold our screening next Wednesday, and we have booked Miss Blackborow’s room for this in advance, so everything is quite organised and moving smoothly. I plan to begin writing up my evaluation this weekend and adding in the audience feedback next week after the screening. I am really looking forward to the screening, as it will be interesting to see how non-media students react to our sequence!