Sound/Soundtrack

Our group have realised that our new treatment idea will have to include one or two soundtracks to create a contrasting atmospheres. We need to spend a lot of time choosing the soundtracks, so we will continue to research these either at home or in any spare time that we get within lessons.

The first soundtrack that we must find needs to create a calm atmosphere, which will allow us to draw the auidence into a false sense of security and create a juxtaposition with the second soundtrack. This will probably be best created with soundtracks that include repetition of various parts.

The second soundtrack needs to have the completely opposite effect, it needs to create a differant type of mood, that being a frantic, fast paced one. This allows us to create the contrasting moods which our focus group said was needed in order to create an effective thriller opening.

Lesson Summary 13/12/11

Today, me and my group finished up our audience research by analysing our survey findings and comparing them with our focus group findings. Based on our findings, we created an audience research so we know exactly who our target audience is. We also started planning our screenplay based on the feedback we received from our focus group,  and we are finding more possible music to use in our opening sequence. Before next lesson we would have drafted up a full screenplay and be fully ready to start filming when we come back from christmas.

Survey Results

Survey Findings.

 In general our typical audience member would be of an age range of 21-40, as a majority 60.5% answered our survey being of that age range. We also found that generally people answering our questionnaires were females with 63.2% and males with 36.8%. Our audience member appears to be teachers, or just generally employed people, who are able to afford cinema tickets and DVDs. Although thriller didn’t come out as overall favourite, it did come out in top three, comedy coming first with 42.1%, romance with 21.6% and thriller with 26.3%. People liked thrillers because they liked the suspense and tension given by it, and they like the sense of mystery, as they like to keep guessing the outcome and they consider it generally entertaining. A majority of our answers came from people that watch films fairly often, with the vast majority of people accessing media on the Internet and TV. A majority of our participants said that they most commonly saw adverts on the TV, billboards and from the Internet due to easy accessibility

These results were fairly useful, as we now a definite age range group to appeal to, their responses also fit alongside our focus group, so with both the focus group and our survey giving similar answers, we will now be able to work on our screenplay and base it off their responses. E.g. we could add a romance story alongside the thriller storyline, as romance is the second most watched genre of our survey group, but not comedy as it would relieve the audience of the tension that must be kept for our thriller movie. To gain a better understanding of our audience and their relationship with the thriller genre, perhaps we need to create another questionnaire with more genre specific questions

Focus Group Findings.

On Tuesday, we showed our focus group our treatment pitch in order to gain additional comments and opinions on the idea and opening sequence we created originally as they are members of our target audience and as such the best judges. We also showed them the opening of American Beauty, an example of film from our chosen genre of thriller, after this we asked several questions regarding our opening sequence, the plot idea and the genre in general. As a group we feel that we gained a lot from our focus group and we will be able to create an opening sequence that our target audience will enjoy and want to watch more of.
Based on our focus group, we decided on a few things: 


1. Our target audience would be Males and Females from 25 to 50 years of age.

2. To capture our target audience in the opening sequence, we will use action to keep them enticed, as we found that it will add a bit of mystery to the opening sequence as to why this action sequence is happening. We will also add some slow paced scenes within the opening to create a juxtaposition, it adds more mystery and suspense. We will also have some dramatic and slow paced music to build tension and to keep the audience hooked and interested in the film.

3. We found that they wanted a mix of slow and fast paced shots within the opening sequence to keep them interested. A slow paced opening sequence may bore them and not keep them interested and a fast paced opening may not suit the idea of our film, and will be hard to do right. 


As a result, our group decided that our opening sequence needed some changing, and so we will write a screenplay based on the comments from the Focus Group. 

TV Drama Analysis - Misfits

Title:

Misfits

Who made the show?

Misfits was created by Howard Overman and written by Tom Green.

Who stars?
Robert Sheehan - Nathan
NathanStewart Jarrett - Curtis
Iwan Rheon - Simon
Lauren Socha - Kelly
Antonia Thomas - Alisha

What channel is it on?
Misfits is aired on the channels 4 and E4

What time is it on?
Due to the language used and the general content of the programme, it is on around 11Pm.

What genre is it?
The show is a drama, with elements of action, comedy and thriller.

Who is the target audience? 
Misfits is aimed towards teenagers living in England, although it does appeal to teenagers from other countries. It mainly appeals to English teenagers because they can relate to the characters and areas more than someone from a different country. A lot of slang is used, which an older auidence may not be familiar with.

What is the narrative?
A group of young offenders are given superpowers during a storm, their powers range from immortality to becoming invisible. They use these powers to overcome different scenarios e.g. a masked man following them.

What/who is being represented?
Misfits represents a very negative view of teenagers. The teenagers in the show are criminals in someway and have ASBO'S and have to do community service. .

Auidence Research (part 2)

As part of our work today, me and my group had to discuss the potential target audience of our opening sequence. This is important as it will help us determine how we can gather our research together in order to find a specific age group for our opening sequence and to see whether our originally planned target audience (20-30) goes along with this result. We will be holding a Focus Group, in which we have decided to try and get some teachers within our school to take part in, as well as the results that we receive from our questionnaire results.

We have decided to get teachers involved in our focus group as there are a variety of different age groups. Some of the teachers within our focus group will be our target auidence, as well as an older age group. This will give us a much wider age range to accurately determine the actual target audience that we will need to aim our opening sequence at. We have written a letter that we will send to a number of the teachers around our school. We are aiming to have 5-6 teachers within our focus group. We will also have to come up with a few questions that we will ask them in order to gather research into their particular views into both our chosen genre and opening sequence. We have discussed these in our group and have come up with the following:

What do you think are target auidence is based on the opening sequence idea?

How could we make the film more appealing to our target audience?

Would the opening sequence make you want to watch the rest of the film, and why?

Does the film idea appeal to you?

What aspects of the thriller genre would you expect to be in this film?

Audience Research (Part 2)

Focus Group Letter

Audience Profile Research

In my group, we each were given the task of coming up with 5 different questions.
My 5 questions were:
1) Rank the genre in order of the ones you watch most?
- Fantasy
- Thriller
- Comedy
- Horror
- Romance
2) Where do you see advertisments the most?
3) Is thriller your favourite?
4) Where do you watch films the most?
- DVD's
- Cinema
- TV
5) Name two of your favourite hobbies?

We came together and created a questionnaire using the question we came up with, this is the questionnaire:
Click here to take survey

We then decided to do a focus group. Since our target audience is young adults around 20-30, we plan to find teachers who are available during tuesdays double lesson from 9am to 11 am and question them. We hope to invite 10 people, then film them as they answer questions about our opening sequence and thier expectations of the Thriller genre.

Audience Profile Research

Click here to take survey

American Beauty (1999)

Director: 

Sam Mendes

Writer: 

Alan Ball

Stars:

 Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening and Thora Birch

In the opening sequence of American Beauty, it begins with an establishing shot on a small suburban town and slowly zooms in, with the voice of a man speaking over it, describing his life to the audience. It then cuts to a middle aged man in a bed getting woken up by an alarm. The scene cuts to him 'jerking off' in the shower, with the voiceover still talking about his life. The scene then cuts to his wife outside, who is cutting roses. We see the middle aged mans gay next door neighbours, who then one of the neighbours begin talking to the middle aged mans wide. The mid-shot of them two talking then zooms onto the middle aged man as he watches them from the window.

To be completed......

STOW Analysis

Strengths:

The initial plot idea matched our chosen genre of thriller. We was told it was great idea because it was character driven, and does not require any form of SFX e.g. explosions. So the editing will be a lot easier later on. The story also contains a lot of mystery and suspense which makes it a good thriller movie.

Weakness:

Our planned opening sequence did not match the plot of the movie, there was a major gap between the opening sequence and the plot. Our teachers said the opening was too fast paced and that we tried to fit too many thriller conventions into the opening.

Opportunities:

Our plot is character driven which means we only need one actor. We can also film the opening sequence locally and there is no need for any special effects, so the editing will be easy.

Threats:

We may not be able to find a suitable actor for our opening sequence. Also filming in an opening place may also present itself as a problem as other people will be around.

Treatment Feedback

Today, my group pitched our initial idea to the other groups in the class and our teachers. When we had finished, we received some constructive feedback on what we can do to improve our idea. 

We were first told that the plot we had made for the thriller genre was excellent, and matched the conventions of our genre. However, we was told that our opening didn't suit our plot, and that we should re-think what we do for our opening scene. Our original opening involved a chase scene, but our teacher Mr Lawes said that the opening to ours needed to be more slow and more simple, he recommended that we watch films such as 'lost in translation' to get ideas on how to create a suitable opening scene to our plot. 

So now my group will go away today and watch films such as 'lost in translation' and 'american beauty' to get inspiration and come up with a new opening sequence.

Prelim Evaluation

The Preliminary Task was to film and edit a thirty second video of a face to face conversation between two people, involving someone opening a door, crossing the room, sitting down and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue with the other character, we had to try and use match on action, shot reverse and the 180 degree rule. 

Overall i believe the four of us worked very well together, sharing ideas and alternating/sharing the work. The task was made easier as we delegated task according to our strengths. Me, Jamie and Andrew chose to write the script based on Alisha's original concept of Robin questioning Batman about his new costume, being refused, and running out of the room crying, the three of us are drama students so we believed it would work to our advantage by writing the script. Alisha focused on the storyboard and the make up as she is the more artistic out of our group. When it came to filming, we all had a role, and we all had a go at editing, and when any of us had difficulty in this, we helped each other. 

I believe we met most of the brief as we used shot reverse, the 180 degree rule and match on action, as seen below:


Match on Action:




Shot-reverse-shot and 180 degree rule:

Prelim - Filmed and Edited

On the 2nd November our group began filming, after searching long and hard for some coloured tights for Robin (Jamie). Filming ran smoothly, and we finished all scenes except one within a couple of  hours. We filmed that scene the next day and uploaded all the footage onto a mac and began to edit our masterpiece. We did most of the editing that day, including the sequencing and even the credits, and downloaded the music needed. All that we was left to do was put the music onto the video and make sure everything was in check (which has now been done). With all that done, we uploaded the video onto youtube for all the world to see.

Planning the Prelim (2)

And this is the storyboard.