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:
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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.