Title Research

Title Research

I have recently looked at a number of thriller films film's that have a title sequence at the beginning. I did this because this allows us to gain a detailed insight the typical conventions of titles, therefore allowing us to apply it to our film, with the conventions incorporated. For example we will be able to see if there is a link between specific colour, fonts and effects meaning. For our film we were thinking about using a black background with white writing, therefore we looked at these intros with our idea in mind to see if it would be appropriate at all.

Red Lights (2012):

• This features a black background with white writing and images, that flash up in a disorientated way.
• shows images that relate to the rest of the film.

Both of these features are typical conventions of thriller films, and this allows us to see that the white writing upon a black background idea is one that may be effective.

The Shining (1980):

• Lots of establishing shots are used, to give an idea and perspective into the area that the film is set in, which is a very rural mountainous range.
• Very eerie, fast paced classical music is used with a fast paced bass drum to add to the tenseness of the atmosphere.

These features are very stereotypical of thriller and horror films alike, therefore we will most likely add a creepy sounding soundtrack to our title scene.

Zombieland (2009):

• The music is very fast paced and almost aggressive heavy metal
• There is a lot of action going on in the clip, for example people being caught and eaten by zombies.

We will probably not use these features, as they are not stereotypical conventions of a thriller, and therefore could look very bad, whereas slow paced music with distorted images could work well.

Vantage Point (2008):

• Throughout the whole title there is very eerie, slow paced music, which seems to fit with the images that flash up.
• There are very fractured images that flash up in a light blue/white colour on a black background, so you only see little bits of the image.

The slow and eerie music is something that is a repeated theme in most titles of thrillers therefore we will probably incorporate that, also the fractured images that flash up, add a very disorientated theme to the titles, and may be something that we add to our titles.

EVALUATION

This is a link to my evaluation:
http://prezi.com/z4p2e7l5wetr/productmedia-evaluation/

Our media product

This is a link to my media product on youtubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7S_Cy3TvvI&context=C42079d0ADvjVQa1PpcFNK-uiaNjOmTkuQHo2n0akPbszbqyyp95E=

Problems, Decisions and Changes

 Whilst filming we encountered a few problems which then had to be changed, the first example of this would be the lighting, initially we wanted the lighting to be quite a low key light, however the camera's were unable to pick up everything that we wanted as the room was too dark, this meant that we had to make our film a bit lighter so that the camera is able to pick up the actors and the room, we have done the lighting in such a way that it still gives a thriller feel, which was hard to do in a fairly well lit room. Another problem that we encountered was that initially we were going to film in one of the group members garage as it seemed perfect location, however we were unable to this as it was too hard to work around the items in the garage, this meant that we were forced to use a different group members garage. A change that we made was the jump cuts, originally we only planned to have about five in one scene, however now we have about 13 spread over two scenes with jump cuts, this was to add pace and suspense. Another change that we made was to the eye scene, originally we had an internet dial up sound playing in the background while numbers flashed up on the eye, however feedback from the class showed that this was one of the worst bits of our film, we completely changed it to have a sort of light tunnel into the centre of the eye, with a high pitched suction noise over the top, this is now concidered one of the best scenes.

Where I am up to

Over the last six weeks, me and my group have been concentrating solely on the filming of our product, and the post production editing of it, this has taken up most of the class time, and a lot of time our of school to complete. The filming took up several days on weekends to gather all of the necessary footage,  and then a few lessons of class time to film very small sections like close ups. The editing of the film has taken about five weeks of class time, this is because I had to watch the film back and choose where certain transitions/effects should be put in place, and this took a lot of time. The importing of sound also took about two weeks to do, for instance we spent a lot of time searching for a sound track that we might have used, however we were unable to find a sound track that would have fit with our film/dialogue and genre, however we did find some sound effects which work very well for the genre of the film, one such example is a heartbeat that we have used which is very fitting with the genre as it builds suspense.

feedback

Our group has shown the completed film to the class, and we were given feedback on what was good/bad, we will now change our film according to the feedback that the class have given, to make a new and improved film

Target audience research

I constructed a questionnaire on thriller films and then handed them around to other students in my college, the aim, to get feedback to attain the optimum results for my product.

The first question: What is the minimum age a Thriller should be aimed at?
 Feedback showed that they thought the acceptable age for a Thriller was 15+ to include all the conventions successfully. This was the target audience for our film anyway.

I also found that the audience we asked wanted their films to be exciting and gripping with elements of suspense however they wanted it easy to follow. Attaining this research has meant that we are now able to please this audience, whilst making it acceptable viewing for young adults who don't want to constantly have to piece the film together.

Our potential target audience is 15 to 25 year olds, this is because our group age range is 16-17 year olds therefore we can relate to the younger end of our target audience but the plot will attract older viewing.