SEALED

Task 1

Task 2

Gender

In our thriller, the office section, we see males in a position of authority. As Abi goes to the desk and asks permission for something from Phil and then takes all the papers to Jason do once again get approval on something. There is tracking shot of Abi moving from one end of the room to the other. Abi having to ask for permission for everything supports the stereotype of men being in charge, but the fact the camera follows Abi subverts the stereotype as it makes her look like the main focus of the clip, making her actions the key element. Secondly, we see ballet as being a typical female pass time, as Philippa is a very feminine elegant girl so supports the stereotype of ballet being a thing for girls

Ethnicity

In our thriller, white people are represented as pure and innocent. Philippa, our ballerina, is a very beautiful white, typically British girl. We also put glitter on face to make her look younger, thus more vulnerable. We used slow motion throughout our whole thriller to create a greater sense on intensity, beauty and elegance. This supports the stereotype of a young white girl being elegant and graceful. In other media projects we see white girls as being vulnerable, the film 'Taken' where a white girl is taken for prostitution as apposed to a black girl and same in the current affairs account of Madeleine Mccann, where again a white girl has been kidnapped.

Age

In our thriller, young people are represented as being vulnerable and innocent. The slow motion camera work allows us to pay attention of the young features of her face and the harmless nature of her. The cross dissolve editing adds to the fluidity of the clip, thus the idea of her harmlessness as being constant. The more solemn music creates and intense idea of her being vulnerable and defenceless. Her little tutu makes her look younger and like a dedicated ballerina. This all supports the stereotype of children being vulnerable as there is a clear sense that she has no defence against anything that may cause harm to her.

Task 3

Our thriller is a niche film, so it is targeted at a small specific audience. Although we would like it to be a mainstream film, our film just simply does not and cannot fulfil the criteria of these mainstream films as it does not contain any recognisable stars or directors, it doesn't have any pre-sold elements and it doesn't have any spectacular visual effects using CGI, 3D, IMAX, stunts or elaborate sets. So basically, our film would not be likely to be distributed by a hot-shot distribution companies like Paramount or Warner Bros.
So our film is going to be narrowly targeted to a specific audience, which would be most appropriate to be a British audience, because all of our actors are British and it is all filmed in England. Also it includes a lot of dance, in particular ballet which is a very popular English pass time, and in the crime section of our thriller is quite similar to crime events in other popular British thrillers so it will be enjoyed most British people. In terms of culture, it could be enjoyed by people of all British cultures at it does not focus on a specific culture.
A distribution company which would be good for our thriller would be Revolver Entertainment who are a vertically integrated company, I believe this company will be good because they have worked with lots of low budget films like 'Fire in Babylon' and 'Anuvahood' and has made them successful so this success could be repeated with our film, it has also distributed other thriller films like 'When The Lights Went Out' and 'The Imposter' so it they know how to distribute a thriller successfully. Here is the Revolver Entertainment sites, showing all the films they have distributed http://www.revolvergroup.com/uk/cinema.
We thought that Internet marketing would be very appropriate for out thriller, as we are primarily targeting a teenage audience. As teenagers spend the majority of their time on the Internet, much more then watching TV, the marketing would be noticed a lot more online. So by creating a facebook page for the film and posting little clips of the film on the facebook page, this would raise awareness and interest towards the film thus making it more of a hit when it hits cinemas.
I think that our film should be distributed in 2D as it is a low budget film, so it does not have the funds to use the special effects to put it into 3D or IMAX. When it comes to the point that our film would be released for home viewing, I think it could be released on DVD, Blu-Ray, collectors editions, iTunes and Amazon because the wider selection so people have the more options of which format they would like to purchase the film in. But I would not let it be released on YouTube as you do not have to pay for that so there would be no profit.

Task 4

I think that in general, teenagers will enjoy our thriller. It is a scary film which is commonly enjoyed by most teenagers so that is a bases to the overall entertainment. For the boys it has the element of the police and detectives which is interesting and exciting, for the girls it has dance, which most girls do enjoy watching, especially when it is a beautiful dance like ballet.
I could also see a lot of teenage couples going to view our film as once again, different elements of it can be enjoyed by both people resulting in a satisfactory trip to the movies.

Here is an example of who would be our ideal audience member:
Name – Stacey Backhurst

Stacey is a talented ballet dancer so she is into all ballet films. She is also a teenager, 17 years old, so enjoys most scary movies.

Her tribe is ‘trendie’ so she is quite ahead of the game, and is individual with her style and personality. She lives in London, Notting Hill

She is into quite slow alternative music by people like Ben Howard and Bon Iver, she doesn’t watch TV very often but when she does, it is usually things like America’s Next Top Model or Miami INK.

When visiting the cinema she will go and see most current films, but will make a special effort to go see high rated thrillers and all dance films, like Street Dance and The Black Swan.

Her everyday routine is organised, she doesnt like to waste her day sleeping so she gets up between 9-10 and has a balanced breakfast, and she will then go to the gym or dance studio to get some exercise done. She meets with some friends to get lunch and spends the afternoon with them. In the evenings she will either go out with her friends or have a quite night in. This is on a weekend, during the week she attends Alleyns school in London where she is a popular girl and fits in nicely. She is on top of her work, but can fall behind easily due to her high demand in the dance department.

I think our film would really suit this person as it has the element of dance that she would be interested in and it also isn’t a very typical thriller with blood and gore so it is more attentive to her personality.

Task 5

Our general target audience was teenagers; there are certain elements in our film which appeal to teenage boys and girls in order to make our film more enjoyable for them.

In our thriller we have many elegant tranquil ballet scenes which takes our audience to a calm place of escapism, it appeals to the girls as ballet is something almost every girl has done, so it takes them back to their childhood which is a pleasant experience. We also have some crime/detective scenes which provides a tense 'edge of the seat' effect, giving the audience with cheap thrills and excitement it also appeals to the males in our audience as they will enjoy the action and violence.

We used an attractive teenage ballerina who appeals the girls as they can see themselves in that role, and they can fantasise about that, she also appeals to the teenage boys as she is similar age to them and contributes as a visual feast for the boys. For the crime/detective parts there will be some sexy police men and detectives which provides phwoar factor for the girls.

The ballet part is in a very plain studio so the audience focus' on the ballerina and her outfit which is fairly revealing, but not inappropriate so we are teasing the male audience, indulging them into our ballerina. For the crime/detective parts there will be dark and scary locations which is enjoyed by both boys and girls as this adds to the suspense, boys also enjoy the complex weapons like guns and the high-tech detective cars, girls will stereotypically be appealed by the 'men in uniform' and they will enjoy this.

Task 6

We have annotated our film on YouTube to show how we used some of the technologies in its creation. (n.b, some browsers may not show the annotations so here they are as screengrabs)

Task 7

The camerawork in our initial prelim is very basic;       The Tilt:

we only used one filming technique, which was tilt up at the beginning, we then have a still camera for the duration of the film. In our thriller, we again use basic camera skills, for the ballet sequence we use none, we just have a still camera so all your focus can be on the ballerina. One of the main camera techniques we adjusted was the fact that we shot the whole ballet sequence in slow motion, which meant we could straight away see the elegance and beauty of the piece come to life as the footage was immediately played back on a TV screen in the studio. In the second part at the office we have a tracking shot, which was a bit more complex and difficult then our tilt in the prelim as it required teamwork between all of us as one was pushing the tracking seat, one was filming and one was holding the microphone, so this took a few more attempts then the camerawork in our prelim as there was just a lot more going on. In our thriller we also used a lot of different levels of filming, as we were lying on the floor at one point, and then next we were at the top of the room in a scissor lift doing a birds eyeshot.

The mise en scene in our prelim was just a natural setting outdoors which we had done no adjustment to, just added a chair as a prop, so again this was very basic, but we realised by working outside you can often get a continuity problem as if you are shooting for a long time, the natural lighting will change. So learning from this error we shot inside and build two sets, our ballet set was very simple with a black floor and walls so nothing distracts from the beauty of the ballerina who we made look very beautiful and elegant, with glittery make-up and pretty white and black leotard/tutu. For our second set we recreated the media room to turn it into an office. This required a lot of heaving lifting, but we were really pleased with the end result and were confident that it represented a police/detective office well.

The editing in our prelim was simple; we just cut from shot to shot, to get different angles and perspectives on the situation that took us one 1hr media lesson. So editing in our thriller is where things really stepped up a notch, as overall we spent about 10hrs editing. Instead of doing the abrupt cuts from shot to shot we used cross fades to merge the footage together and make it flow as one piece, this made the piece a lot more graceful. We had a lot more footage for our thriller, so the task of picking and choosing what clip would work best where was a lot more complex then in our prelim, but this better as it meant the shots we chose were the best of the best. The most complicated part of the editing was doing the bridge between the discrete ballet sequence and the initial office scene as it was hard to make the transition natural and not too abrupt as there is a big contrast between the two scenes. By adding an establishing shot of the surrey police station we were able to effectively achieve this.

Some of the differnt angles we edited together.

The sound in our prelim was not great, again due to the fact that we chose to film outside, we had the problem of the wind which kept changing so it was getting in the way of the dialogue. Another issue was the dialogue, as we didnt know our lines we spend too long focusing on getting the lines right and not on the camerawork. In our thriller we filmed indoors so we never had the problem of wind, also we didnt have any dilalogue in our ballet part so it meant that we could detach and remove any audio picked up and we could add music without any interuption of other sound. The sound in the office was more complicated as we had to add digetic sound effects like computer/phone noises and car noises, but we also had to ensure that these sounds effects did not outshine the sound of the dialogue. So after some adjustment of the volume we got the perfect balance between all the sounds effects in out thriller.