Our Product

Evaluation

Evaluation 

I feel that our opening sequence is a way of developing the thriller genre and it's conventions by merging conventions seen in films in the crime genre and those form thrillers to help expand the audience by trying to take what makes films similar to this - like Se7en - and implementing those ideas into our product. To make this relevant to our target audience we took the results from our questionnaire and used them to influence our ideas when coming up with the plot for our film. An example of this is how we adopted the idea of a crime-thriller instead of an action-thriller or slasher type movie as it not only appealed to our target audience much more, but was easier for us to execute with the tools we had to use. Our opening sequence in some senses conforms to the conventions of thrillers as it helps build up suspense in order to keep viewers interested whilst also giving them a glimpse of what our antagonist is capable of, whilst including basic things such as opening credits for important roles in production and the distribution company as well as the title of the film itself.

Our media product doesn't really focus on any particular social groups, but the demographic we targeted it at was teenagers to middle aged working class people, as they're the most likely to be able to relate to films set in urban areas, and our cast is made up of teens. Our film doesn't feature any disabled people, elderly or young, so it can't portray them in a positive or negative light.

For distribution, we chose to use Miramax as they've had previous successes in the thriller genre. They're also known to release a lot of independent films in comparison to other studios who may see them as a high risk and low guarantee of making profit. Our film would be released in cinemas first and then on dvd as this would help it get more exposure and notoriety if it did well at the box offices, as well as help it produce revenue long after it's release in cinemas.

From constructing this product I leaned a lot about how to use more expensive film cameras as opposed to smaller, lower quality camcorders which we had to use for our preliminary task. This gave me an insight into how films with biger budgets managed to be created at such a high quality and really made me appreciate how long a feature film can really take to plan, and then actually create - We spent weeks planning, filming and editing for a 3 minute clip. I also learned a lot about how to use Adobe Premiere Pro to the best of my ability whilst finding out about new features. In the past i had only used Sony Vegas Pro, which is functionally similar, but operates in a different way, so creating this product has given me  a broader understanding of editing software and the tools needed to create high quality media.

In

Development of Ideas

Development of Ideas

My groups's initial idea was to make a psychological thriller which incorporated elements of crim thrillers into it, such as car chases and murders. We were inspired by the film 'No Country for Old Men' and the way that the main character is cunning and has no remorse when it comes to killing people. For our opening sequence, we had planned to adapt a scene for No Country for Old Men, in which our main character would be pulled over by a police officer, he would cooperate with them, but kill him before being arrested. Following this, he would go into a nearby shop, pay for some items, but then kill the cashier. We believe that this scene would help introduce our character as a psychopath, but also as somebody who's intelligent (he would be using a home-made weapon to kill these people) - an idea we got from the film 'Se7en'.

The film would be set in the present and so it wouldn't be hard for  us to find an area to shoot our opening sequence in  - as there is no shortage of shops in London. Also, as it wouldn't be set in a different world or time, there would be no specific type of setting that we would be restricted to, so as long as we could find a quiet road with a shop on it, we'd have no trouble finding a location to film. On the other hand, guaranteeing that the road would be quiet would be a problem as most places in London are very busy. From the data we got back from our questionnaire, we gathered that people would most likely enjoy it, this is because the favorite thriller sub-genre was 'Psychological' and the characteristics of a good villain we got from people were 'cunning', 'decency' and 'dark' which we felt worked perfectly with our character.

Another idea that i thought of was an action - thriller. The idea for my narrative was that a city in a 1st world country was taken over by a private military company and that and is being held under occupation - and idea which i got from Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight Rises' - which isn't a thriller, but has a gritty, dark atmosphere to it which i felt was a good foundation for to create a story on. A group of 7 ex-army soldiers take it upon themselves to try and take down the organisation and liberate the city, the number of them taken from 'The Magnificent Seven'.

To produce and opening sequence for this film, I feel would be difficult, this is due to having to begin developing my characters in the same way as trying to portray a city as under control and needing liberation. One way I found to do this that could work was to have my opening sequence a montage of establishing shots of city, panoramas of event leading to the city's takeover; this could be people being killed or captured, firing squads moving in, or a clip of a breach being conducted.

when filming for this idea, we'd use a mixture of high-key and low-key lighting, but mostly low key for high contrast and to connote a gritty atmosphere and high tension in the film's plot. For effect, some of the shot we'll use in our opening sequence will consist of high-angle panoramas to establish the setting of a city, slow motion shots of people (a firing squad aiming rifles and moving through a dark hallway, which has only a red flare in it to connote danger; and build tension to keep people watching and keep them interested in the story.

Although, I feel that this idea has much more depth to it, I feel it'll be much harder for us to execute, this is due to props (guns, grenades, military / SWAT gear) needing to be provided and also a lack of people - our protagonists alone require 7 people - we have 4. In comparison to our other idea, data has less relevance when looking at it in relation to other thrillers, however this may be seen as pushing the boundaries of the genre. That being said, from the results of our questionnaire, we saw that action was the most popular genre, with thriller at a close second, I feel that this means that it'll be accepted well be our audience of ages 12 and up.

BBFC Rating

BBFC Rating

To be able to give our film a rating we had to assess it's content on these factors: 

Discrimination

Drugs

Horror

Imitable behaviour

Language

Nudity 

Sex

Theme 

Violence

We decided to rate our film as 15. This is due to the type of content we display in the film - as we think that it's unsuitable for a 12 or 12A since it could cause worry in parents that their children might imitate the behaviour. We chose not to rate it as an 18 as this would narrow our target audience and cause us to lose out on a large part of the demographic who would be interested in this type of film.

most of the violence in the film is implied, so the audience won't see exactly what happens, but the events leading up to it and those after it, but it still shows a lot of the blood and gore of a horror film and there isn't very much swearing, sex or nudity in the film, so it, we feel that the best idea is to aim the film at a slightly younger audience, but not too young so that we can maintain the tone of the film and keep it as planned.

Risk Assessment

Storyboard

Location Scouting