Task 7: What We Have Learned From Prelim To Main Task

Task 7

What We Have Learned From Prelim To Main Task

From the initial prelim task to the making of our thriller, I think it is safe to say that I've come quite a long way in terms of my knowledge in how to make a low/no budget film. We've looked at how the cameras work, various filming techniques including shot types and camera angles and editing, including sound and after effects. 



The camera work in our preliminary task is fairly basic, with six still camera shots, two of which are the same, just zoomed in a bit. I would say that the camera work in our thriller is far more effective than what we had in our prelim, as we had more professional and creative camera angles, as well as a much wider range of shot types. Another thing we introduced to our thriller was a mixture of stationary and moving shots. We used a lot of hand held shots in order to make our thriller seem more realistic and almost filmed documentuary style, as well as pans and long shots to create perspective, essential to the sniper scene. The range and diversity of our camera shots made our thriller appear much more professional in comparison to the fairly limited preliminary task.

In our preliminary task, the mis-en-scene was very basic, a bare room with one of our actors standing in it. There is an exchange involving, I believe, a can of hairspray. The M.E.S. in our prelim tells the audience nothing, as it is very non-specific and doesn't really make a lot of sense. In our thriller however, the mis-en-scene is more specific and obvious to the audience. It is set outside a large country estate looking house and most of the action takes place in and around a car that is flagged down by a supposed police officer. There are more actors, six rather than two, and of differing ages actually relevent to the storyline. The use of props and costume also added to our mie-en-scene, in the prelim the actors wore whatever the happened to be wearing that day, but in our thriller we had two police uniforms complete with weapons and a radio for the officers and the other actors dressed as the family the thriller is based around would.

There were no sound effects in our preliminary task, there was only the dialogue between Charlie and Joe and the sound of the can hitting the ground. No sounds were added in during the editing process. For our Thriller we had quite a few sound effects that we added in during editing, including but not limited to; gunshots, impacts and whistles. We used soundtrack pro to find and modify the sounds that we needed. Often the sounds were too long, meaning we had to cut them to the length of the window in which they were needed. For example, the sniper shot was originally two rounds of cannon fire but it had the desired effect so I cut off the majority of the clip, measuring against the amount of time it was needed for in our thriller and then inserted it into final cut pro and synchronised it with the visual effects that make the shooting.

The editing process was extremely basic for our preliminary task, although this is where we learned how to make log and rush bins on Final Cut pro and order and sequence our shots. We did not add any sound or visual effects in Final Cut, we only cut our shots together. For our main thriller, we did the same as before, ordered our shots and cut them together, then used After Effects to create the scope and the blood. The scope and the optics change involved creating masks in After Effects in order to get the black around scope area, the changeover and the blurred focus on the edges of the sight. The blood was done by using a two separate sample animated blood spatters, altering the sise and throw and then centering them in on the crosshair and synchronising with the scope movement when the gun fires.

I feel that our group has come a long way since the prelim task through to the main editing process, we have not only learned how to use various computer programs such as Final Cut pro, Soundtrack Pro and Adobe After Effects, but learned how to utilise them in order to make a convincingly professional looking thriller.

Task 6: How Has Digital Technology Been Used In Our Thriller?

Task 6

How Has Digital Technology Been Used In Our Thriller?

Task 5: How did we address/attract our target audience?

Attracting and Addressing Our Target Audience

Task 4: Our Target Audience

Task 4
Our Target Audience

The target audience for our thriller are primarily males aged between about fifteen and thirty years old, as well as a minority female audience of an age with their male counterparts. In no way is our thriller aimed at a niche audience, it's clever yet easy to grasp or 'high concept' storyline and hollywood-style special effects means that it is aimed at a global audience and is something that most people can enjoy.

We aim to attract our target audience to our thriller by means of gunfights, car chases and an action packed narrative, the main reason that people go to watch thrillers in the first place. To aid in our attraction of the teenage male audience in particular, we have also included a 'damsel in distress', who will later turn into a female action hero and someone that the younger female audience can aspire to.

Due to the formulaic high concept, our audience can come from various backgrounds, ranging from working to upper class as it is the kind of thriller that can and usually is enjoyed by all. In most cases however, I think that the working and middle classes are the kind of people who are more likely to go and watch a thriller like this one. As I said, there is a global audience for these types of films as they are something that people from every demographic can enjoy.

Here is Chaos Sorrow, he is our ideal target audience. Chaos loves heavy metal bands and music, such as Megadeath and Metallica. Chaos wears dark clothes and loves really violent and aggressive action films and thrillers, which is exactly what our film is about. Also, Chaos likes to have lots of friends round who he plays guitar with, and they then watch films on the Xbox 360, and from their they can see our film on Xbox LIVE as we are going to market it in such a way through Magnolia and therefore not specifically try and aim for the cinema.

Name: Carl Chaos Sorrows

Email: chaossorrows@hotmail.com

Here, we have created an individual profile page for Carl Chaos Sorrows, who is the perfect type of person who we think would like our film. His goth/heavy metal like personality really connects with our film, 'Commando' being an action Thriller involving lots of fighting, action, deaths and gore.

Task 3: Who Will Distribute Our Thriller?

Task 3
Who Will Distribute Our Thriller?
We have decided as a group that the most suitable film production company/institution to produce our film would be ‘Between The Eyes'.



This company has recently produced films of the same genre to ours, such as: ‘Welcome to the Punch’, an action Thriller production made from a mediocre budget, similar to ours. This also shows that this production company would be more likely to pick our film due to the genre. Another film that ‘Between The Eyes’ have produced is the British film, ‘Shifty’, also being an action Thriller, however has the involvement of gangsters instead of mercenaries.



Failing this however, we could take our film to a film festival and hope that it will be picked up by an American film company or privately bought, sold and distributed.

The main way that our film will generate revenue is primarily based upon DVD sales, as this is not the type of film that will hit the large popular cinemas first time. As our film is a low budget British film it would not be a huge success in Hollywood, although the rights may be bought by an American film company so that down the line they can make a remake with a bigger budget and more famous actors. Our type of film however, would be popular in the gaming world due to the violence and action, which would appeal to gamers, which is a huge market in the US, bigger than the film industry. We would then hope an American gaming distributor, such as ‘Magnolia’ would not distribute it to the cinema, but to Gaming consoles, such as: Xbox LIVE, PS3 & PC to get ‘pay per view’. Also, an effort would be made to distribute it to the television market, such as selling the rights to Television stations, such as: BBC, ITV & Channel 4 and also film channels like ‘Movies4Men’ located on Sky Movies, ‘Film 4’ etc. The production company, ‘Between The Eyes’ specialize in action Thrillers as mentioned above and from research they seem to be successful, despite being low budget, being made by non-famous film companies & using first time film directors. The film production company, ‘Between The Eyes’ has a target audience of males between the ages of, 16 – 25 year olds and a secondary audience of 30+. We know this due to their history of films produced (as mentioned above) obviously appeal to younger men. If our film turned out to be a huge success in Britain then we might try to promote it to US. However, before even aiming for the US market, we would set our sights on Europe, and to do so we would try to sell the rights to our movie to a EU distributor such as 'Artificial Eye'. Because the company making our film is very low budget, to offset the costs of making the film we might sell the European distribution rights in advance, this would help us make some money to finish the film properly however it would mean we were left with only North American and British rights. As first time film makers this film would be about us building up a portfolio of work rather than making money and building up our reputation and making bigger films. In order for us to promote our film on an international scale we will take our film to film festivals in order to hopefully be picked up by a US distributor, such as the ‘Weinstein Brother’ who are known for picking up successful British films like ‘The Kings Speech’ and distributing them to them Worldwide to a greater market.

Task 2: How Did We Represent Social Groups?

Task 2
How Did We Represent Social Groups?

Firstly, we are representing the Asians as soldiers, as often in films Asians are the bad guys however in our thriller we are following the Asians and making them out to be good guys who we support and follow throughout the film. Once again, we want to represent the Asians as strong, violent and having a military background. We are not conforming to the general stereotype of asians, we are aiming to subvert this unlike in other films, such as in Rambo, Crouching Tiger & Hidden Dragon, many of the James Bond films & many Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee films.

Shane As A Mercenary Officer

Men are represented in our film as ruthless & murderous which is often the case in action thrillers such as The Expendables & The A Team.  We wanted to represent the Asians as being very physically large, well combat trained and brutal looking subverting the physical stereotype appearance of Asians from being small, subservient & mathematically minded to tall, stocky, scary etc. The reasons for doing this is that we are conforming to the stereotype of soldiers and mercenaries in order to make them more imposing and to add to the action genre.

Simon Talks Business.

 In our thriller we chose a blonde girl to be the step-daughter. Stereotypically blonde girls are usually the hysterical character within a wide range of films, in our film we wanted to conform with this stereotype. This is shown by the blonde girl screaming 'DAD!' constantly, being terrified and we thought by choosing a blonde girl for our cast that this would be most effective for a terrified young girl. The blonde also tends to be pretty expendable.

Dont' Panic Georgia!

We also chose a dark-haired girl to be the biological daughter. She is the more level-headed one and is viewed more as an action heroine figure, not dissimilar to Katniss in The Hunger Games. She is physically fit and does not panic when the car door is opened by the G-36c wielding mercenary officer. She remains calm and obeys orders, supposedly in order to plan a later escape.

Maggie As The Action Heroine.

The basic definition of a mercenary, also known as a defence contractor, is one who works for wages. In military terms, mercenaries are professional soldiers that are typically hired by a foreign government to clean up particular unrest that may be occurring in that country. The job is highly demanding and can be considered dangerous. However, for those with a military background, mercenary work can be a rewarding position for those that like the excitement of combat and aiding in resolving conflicts. So, in our film we want to represent our characters in this way to show an audience that the mercenaries have experience, this being physically muscular, looking older, visible scars showing they have fought before & looking professional, i.e. how they run, holding of gun, stance etc. 

Shane Intimidates Simon.

Task 1: Real Media Conventions in Our Thriller

How have we matched or challenged the conventions of a thriller?

In our thriller we have for the most part matched the conventions of a typical action thriller. We have included many of the main things that people look for in a thriller and more often than not are the reason they will chose to watch a thriller in the first place. These include, but are not limited to; gunfire, punches and gereral violence, a plot that is clever but relatively easy to grasp, well-known actors (Simon Wood; Deadmendotcom, Zirgi, George Hill; Blood Of Purity) and of course, mercenary police officers, a kidnapping and a brutal execution.

Real Media Conventions in Umia