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.

Editing 2

We are still really pleased with the way our film is coming together, we are almost finished with the editing, there a still a few tweeks needed thought, but most of it is tiding the footage up, ensuring the corss cuts are the same length and HD-ing the film.


We have changed the film a fair bit since my last editing blog. We have now incorperating a left-right thing. We have kept the concept of slowy introducing our character, (but increased the speet of the process) and now we thought that the thriller would be more effective if we have one shot where the ballerina is on the left, then one shot where she is on the right.
This makes the piece more interesting, as when the footage stuck in one area it would become a bit boring, so we have now mixed things up a little and it makes the piece come to life more so we are very pleased.


We have now also added the music! Watch the piece with music really adds to the thriller effect. We chose a piece or piano music by Beethoven which we think works really well with the ballet and brings the piece together effectivly.
Here is the updated version of our thriller:

Editing 1

Editing so far has been really enjoyable, its very interesting and exciting watching your footage transform from lots of different clips to one flowing piece, its also exciting to see what we have been working towards all this time finally come together.

So as a group we decided that our piece should show innocence and beauty of the ballerina and the ballet. So the editing plays a huge role in achieving this concept. So far we have created our initial footage to not giving anything away, only showing parts of her costume and her body like hands and feet, we then move into a extreme close up of her face to see the detail on concentration. We then move to regular close up to give a fuller, clearer image and finally a full body shot, we thought this is effective because only showing parts of her body foreshadows later parts of the film and it indulges the audience as they want to see her face, it also slowly introduces our character in a elegant way reflecting the dance.

We thought cross cutting the footage together would be the most appropriate for our thriller, as it is sophisticated, neat and subtle, ensuring that no attention is drawn from the ballerina.

This is what we have created so far:

Font

Choosing the font for our thriller was a fairly basic task as we had a pretty clear idea of what type of font we thought would be effective. After looking at various fonts we finally chose Big Caslon.

'Sealed'

This is a pointed serif font, which is formal and traditional, the pointed element to it foreshadows the idea of danger and violence later on in the film. You often see this style of font on newspapers, books and legal documents, this displays the formal nature of the font. Ballet is a very disciplined and regimented dance and so is this font, it is evenly balanced and symmetrical, so during the title sequence, the font and the footage mirror each other. It also shows the idea of OCD, which seems abnormal to most people, thus gives a thrilling effect.

Another film which uses this type of font is 'Identity':

Identity is a film about people stranded at a desolate Nevada motel during a nasty rainstorm, ten strangers become acquainted with each other when they realise that they're being killed off one by one.

The font is very alike the font we have used, except they have made theirs red, suggesting that the film will be more gory with blood, whereas our font is white to represent the idea of innocence and purity.