Evaluation Task 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

For our primary target audience we decided: Men and Women aged between 18-24
For our secondary target audience we decided: Aged 25-40

Our main objective and aim for our audience is older teens due to our thriller including a complex psychological character and mature storyline. The fact that our actress is in her late teens helps us to attract our target audience as well as they have an immediate link and comparison to the first person/character they see in our film, which is important due to the fact that in our title sequence we only have one character.


The clothing our gymnast wears for the scenes in the gymnasium, consists of black training shorts and a leotard which is a normal attire a gymnast would wear when training due to there being no restrictions when carrying out her movements ands skills. Due to her being a pretty female with little amount of clothing on, this could attract male audiences also. As well as her leotard and training shorts, our character is also shown wearing a Great Britain tracksuit indicating to the audience of how high she is skilled as a gymnast and that she obviously competes at a very high level. The fact that her level of sport is very high, our character may allow some audiences to relate to a high level of sport and how much mental and physical challenges are involved to take place in competitions and training which also links to allowing the audience to understand the cause of her psychological problems and the difficulties she is going through.

For our studio black out scenes, our gymnast changes outfit to a more elegant, competition attire consisting of her wearing a sparkly leotard with her hair slicked back and makeup done up to look ready to compete. This allows a good contrast to show on screen and conveys how much she has changed psychologically as well as physically towards the audience. Also the fact that Emily is all done up and looks so elegant on screen and impressive with all the different skills she performs, this could appeal to younger women who used to do gymnastics but later quit when it got too challenging and allow them to reminisce and wish they hadn't quit at an early stage during their training.

Evaluation Task 4 : Who would be the audience for your media product?

To be able to understand and choose successfully the right target audience for my thriller, I went and did some research to help me gather useful information in order to help my decision.


One of the first tasks I did with my research was to gather information from popular internet sites such as IMDB, where the majority of the public express their thoughts on different genre's of films. I looked at the ratings and reviews of psychological thrillers to get an idea of which age groups are the most popular in watching our type of thriller sequence. Due to previous research of this film due to the similarities of it being a psychological thriller, I had a look at the IMDB ratings of the black swan ratings and reviews:

In total, 474720 IMDB users have given an averaged rate of 8.0/10

	Votes	Average
Males	302277	8.0
Females	125338	8.0
Aged under 18	3618	8.3
Males under 18	1792	8.3
Females under 18	1826	8.2
Aged 18-29	248399	8.2
Males Aged 18-29	167328	8.2
Females Aged 18-29	81071	8.2
Aged 30-44	136196	7.9
Males Aged 30-44	106288	7.9
Females Aged 30-44	29908	7.9
Aged 45+	23575	7.4
Males Aged 45+	18101	7.4
Females Aged 45+	5474	7.4
IMDb staff	32	8.2
Top 1000 voters	773	7.4
US users	75923	8.0
Non-US users	351692	8.0
IMDb users	474720	8.0

Due to these results being worldwide I thought it would show a good selection and variety of ratings and reviews to gather the information in which I needed. Looking at these results it is clear how thrillers are mainly favourite and watched by males Also the most popular age range is around 18-29 and the second most popular 30-44. This shows how psychological thrillers may be too complex to understand by younger viewers allowing them to get bored during the film due to it not being very appealing or to advance. Another reason could be the length of psychological may be too long for people who are still in education, exceeding their attention spam due to the loss of lots of action or comedic elements which normal thrillers entail.


To gain some more information from a wider variety I had a look at Wikipedia and the review section of the well know psychological thriller "Inception" as it is a very popular worldwide thriller a links to the idea of our thriller having a psychological theme to it.


Inception was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters on July 16, 2010.^[10][103] The film had its world premiere at Leicester Square in London, United Kingdom on July 8, 2010.^[104] In the United States and Canada, Inception was released theatrically in 3,792 conventional theaters and 195 IMAX theaters.^[10] The film grossed $21.8 million during its opening day on July 16, 2010, with midnight screenings in 1,500 locations.^[105] Overall the film made $62.7 million and debuted at No.1 on its opening weekend.^[106] Inception '​s opening weekend gross made it the second-highest-grossing debut for a science-fiction film that was not a sequel, remake or adaptation, behind Avatar '​s $77 million opening weekend gross in 2009.^[106] The film held the top spot of the box office rankings in its second and third weekends, with drops of just 32% ($42.7 million) and 36% ($27.5 million) respectively,^[107][108] before dropping to second place in its fourth week, behind The Other Guys.^[109]
Inception grossed US$292 million in the United States and Canada, US$56 million in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta and US$475 million in other countries for a total of $823 million.^[3] Its five highest-grossing markets after the USA and Canada (US$292) were China (US$68million), the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta (US$56 million), France and the Maghreb region (US$43 million), Japan (US$40 million) and South Korea (US$38 million).^[110] It was the sixth-highest grossing film of 2010 in North America,^[111] and the fourth-highest internationally, behind Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1.^[112] The film currently stands as the 42nd-highest-grossing of all time.^[113] Inception is the third most lucrative production in Christopher Nolan's career—behind The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises^[114]— and the second most for Leonardo DiCaprio—behind Titanic.^[115]

Critical reception

Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 86% based on reviews from 284 critics, with an average score of 8/10. The website reported the critical consensus as "smart, innovative, and thrilling, Inception is that rare summer blockbuster that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually."^[116] Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 (out of 100) based on 42 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "generally favorable reviews."^[117] In polls conducted by CinemaScore during the opening weekend cinemagoers gave Inception an average score of "B+".^[118]
While some critics have tended to view the film as perfectly straightforward, and even criticize its overarching themes as "the stuff of torpid platitudes," online discussion has been much more positive.^[119] Heated debate has centered on the ambiguity of the ending, with many critics like Devin Faraci making the case that the film is self-referential and tongue-in-cheek, both a film about film-making and a dream about dreams.^[120] Other critics read Inception as Christian allegory and focus on the film's use of religious and water symbolism.^[121] Yet other critics, such as Kristin Thompson, see less value in the ambiguous ending of the film and more in its structure and novel method of storytelling, highlighting Inception as a new form of narrative that revels in "continuous exposition".^[122]
Looking at this, the overall response was that "Inception" appealed very much in the States and Canada due to it  being released in 3,792 conventional theaters and 195 IMAX theatres while also grossing $21.8 million during its opening day on July 16, 2010. Much of its success was based in America, however the film got given a score of 86% on reviews from 284 critics by the world wide Rotten Tomatoes review. However looking into this information showed that some critics stated that the film could be a little bit hard to understand the storyline due to is psychological theme in the movie, but with further understanding it became one of it positives due to its clever structure and novel method of storytelling.

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Evaluation Task 3 : What kind of media insitution might distribute your media product and why?

 05/02/15

Evaluation Task 3

Q: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

In our thriller sequence groups we discussed and came to a conclusion that we would want our final film to based on a physiological thriller with a mid-budget to work with. We would have a British cast and film it in the UK, but decided in order to have a wider range audience over seas, it would be distributed with an American company. The distributor company in which we agreed would be a good distributor for our film is "Sony Pictures Classics" which is an "independent" film division of "Sony Pictures Entertainment". We decided on the this distributor for the following reasons:

• They have distributed films such as "Blue Jasmine" which links to our theme of psychological problems.
• This company have distributed and focused on thrillers before.
• Its a good distributor which focuses on the actors to dominate the films such as "Blue Jasmine".

  While researching into different film in which this company has done we noticed that they are all based on the actors playing the characters and the storyline rather than focusing on making the film into a high-budget distributed, tent pole movie which other American companies focus on. Recent films which they have budgeted have been "Blue Jasmine" with a high-budget of $18million and "Magic In the Moonlight" with a $16.8million budget. Looking into all of these we decided to base our budget similarly to the film "Black Swan" with a budget of $13million.






 We also analyzed how if our film had no budget then we could look into other possible ways which, staying as a low budget film, could include big name actors to attract the audience's attention to the film and be interested to go and see it. Also we discussed the possibility of including the film into an IMAX screening to give a variety of the viewings for the audience with 2D and 3D screenings but are aware that it may reduce the films serious and dark genre.




As well as "Sony Pictures Classics" as a possible distributor for our psychological thriller, another possibility of a good distributor for our film could be "Hammer Film Productions"which is an British film production company which mainly focuses on horrors and thrillers which would help to add to our dark element of our genre in our film. During their most successful years, this distribution company worked in partnership with the major United States studios, such as Warner Bros which could be a advantage due to their huge budgets in their films. This distributor would benefit us because:

• Running alongside their productions of horror films, Hammer also focus on producing low-budget psychological thrillers.
• They focus on adding dark tension to the genre's of their films and building tension.

                                                       
                                                        

Researching into different films distributed by these companies i noticed how they are very good in focusing on the building up of tension in the dark genres. An example of this is the 1965 British suspense film "The Nanny" where not being a horror movie, the tension and suspense in this film has been created to keep the audience intrigued to the actions on the screen which is what we are aiming for with our psychological thriller.

Evaluation Task 2 : How does your product represent particular social groups?

13/02/15

Evaluation Task 2 

Q: How does your product represent particular social groups?

For our thriller title sequence we only needed one person to act for our character which was a GB team gymnast with psychological problems, stopping her from performing. Our character represented a positive representation of a typical white teenage 17yr old girl where physically she is fit and healthy on the outside, due to her competitive sport, but emotionally and on the inside, she has psychological problems which is a topic that teenage female audiences are likely to strongly relate to.

In order to allow the audience to understand the character visually, at the beginning of the thriller during her warm up she wears a GB tracksuit and then a  black GB gymnastics leotard to convey the level of skill of her sport while she is performing her sequences. She represents a high performance athlete due to her being in the GB team, allowing her to be a role model character towards teenage girls due to her achievements.

 

This level of sport is an accepted stereotype of how any activity which requires this amount of training is mentally challenging and comes with a high level of stress leading to emotional and mental challenges which is conveyed through our character. In the end we thought our actor Emily represented what we visually were after for our thriller sequence really well and hopefully it will show in our final finished sequence.

Evaluation Task 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

 

In the gymnastics-base American TV Program "Make it or Break it" some elements in the sequences of the shots influenced and showed us ideas of some of the shots and elements which would look good for our thriller:

 

 An example of this would be in "Make it or Break it" you will see a sequence called an "illusion" where the gymnast spins around using one of her legs. In our thriller the gymnast does the exact same move in slow motion which looks amazing on screen and we thought it would help to show off the extent of how talented our gymnast was.

 Stick It:Although "Stick It" isn't a thriller there were lots of elements which this American movie had which helped us to gain a good idea of how to show our thriller the best way we possibly could. An idea which I really from our thriller was the slow-motion feature of the gymnasts hands rubbing together with the chalk. In "Stick It" there is a really good example which proved how good the shot will look:

As you can see we added the element of slow-motion which was not originally shown in the original cut from the film, but the final result resulted in an build up of tension and suspense in the actions. This also helps to strengthen the fact that it is a thriller genre and also gives a variety of shots due to the fact all the shots edited before were at normal pace really allowing the slow-motion shots to be emphasised in the moment:

 Another idea from this film would be the camera angles used such as the birds-eye view which we also ended up using in our final thriller piece which is shown below from the film "Stick It" 

 We were thinking of maybe using the optical illusion shown as we thought the effects were very cool and looked amazing on screen but during the editing process, decided that it would not match our genre of thriller.

  

Account of Editing Work:

Process Of Editing Our Opening Thriller:

Day 1:
For the start of our thriller work, we began by organizing all of our shots into order using Adobe Premier, and deciding which of the same type of shots were the best ones to choose for our final thriller sequence. Once we had chosen the shots that we wanted for our sequence we took the original footage called rushes and put them on the timeline in order of each shots for a rough cut, ready for editing and cutting together in order to form our final thriller.

Day 2:
In this lesson we sadly had one member of the group away, Crerar, due to other commitments but we all worked together really well in order to get as much done in the lesson. After we finished touching up our rough cut and putting our shots in order from the last lesson, we then started to properly edit each shot by using two main tools; the razor blade tool which allowed us to chop and cut each shot in the way we wanted, and the trim handle tool where by hovering the arrow over either end of the shot we could stretch or shorten the footage. Also during the edit process we learned how we can change the lighting on different shots for each of them to match each other. We had a slight problem with some of the footage due to a shot not matching/flowing into the next resulting in us having to change the angle and camera level of the shot in order to allow it to work.

Day 3:
During this shot we next looked at the gymnast sequence shots filmed in the studio where she blacks out and sees herself performing in a dark room (the studio). During this lesson Katie and I had a little understanding, much to the amusement of others but carried on through and worked hard.

Throughout the next few days of editing I sadly missed a few lessons due to other work commitments such as my theatre exam piece which required lots of rehearsals but the rest of the group worked really hard while I was away. The next lesson I was able to attend without other commitments, it was just me and Igor working on sound. Doing this we started off by picking loads of different music from YouTube to upload and convert into a certain file format and then compressed it in H264 in order to make sure its ready to upload, and then choose a good variety of music for our thriller to see which one suited best. Next we then slowed down each music track to about %25 to make it more dark and imposing for the atmosphere for our thriller