Style

Style and Tone

Dark tone with shadows - psychological thriller which depicts a two-faced character. Urban landscape - concrete jungle, gritty feel with images of such things as concrete underpasses and high-rise low grade concrete estate.

It is important to build a sense of nervous tension for the audience - through a range of devices such as sound (both atmospheric, diegetic and perhaps moments of silence). Perhaps some contrapuntal sound to jar with the images of dilapidation.

Vox pops

Vox Pops

Media audience survey results

What group are you in? The majority of the people who took my survey said that they were in the age group of 17 to 20, this means that our target audience will be in their late teens. What mental age do you think you have? The audience was also asked to specify where they thought they were mentally, most of which said they were mentally older than their actual age. This means that they are more mature and capable of dealing with more powerful concepts. Which race/ethnicity describes you best? From this question we deduced that about 85% of people who answered our survey were white/Caucasian. I don't feel that this should change the thriller I make however it should consider how people will react maybe to racism or they might prefer main characters of their own race.  If you live in London what borough do you live in? This can help us decide maybe where we'd want our thriller to be shown and it will also help us know maybe places we could reference in the film maybe to help create a connection with the audience. Popular Thrillers: Most of these films are psychological thrillers, this means that our target audience prefers psychological thrillers and I should consider making my film more psychological. Are you Male or Female?  From this we know that the target audience is female, this means that we should orientate the film around this, for example we could make the main character female or make more characters in the film female. Also we could consider how the female majority will react to good looking male actors. Finally we could include problems that females have to face more than men to help create a connection. What is your favorite type of thriller?  The psychological thriller is preferred over the other genres, this means that we are aiming our film at a possibly more intelligent audience who like to have their thriller make them think. Again this should mean I orientate my thriller towards being a psychological thriller with maybe some action. Final Target Audience: From this we can outline my target audience, a typical person who I would hope to engage would be white/caucasian female and between the age of 17 to 20. Another specification would be that they enjoy the psychological type of thriller, generally speaking the psychological type of thriller is preferred by an audience that believes that they have a higher mental age. This is proven by the results of the "what mental age do you think you have?" graph which tells us that people from 17-20 think they have a mental age of 21-25.  Finally, I would like to take into account where my target audience will be living. This determines where I would like to show my film and it also may mean that I need to change some of the content to best suit people who live in Southwark. A list of films that people like is always useful to me because it means I can watch what my audience wants to see and see it from their perspective, this means that I will understand what I need to involve in my production for them to be interested.

What I have learned so far

Storyboarding:

I have learned how storyboarding works and how storyboarding helps someone produce film. A storyboard is made similarly to a comic strip using the panel to panel format and can be drawn with stick figures as long as it annotates the film. Storyboards are used to show:

• Characters in the frame
•  Dialog
• camera angles 
• lighting
• Time between scenes

Filming:

I have learned that filming without a storyboard is tough and that filming requires more time than anticipated. Also you have to be careful as to small details like the camera being level and other things such as if you are entering a room be sure that the lights are on before you go in so in the next scene they don't just suddenly appear on. You need to speak up a lot if you are using the cameras to record sound or when editing the sound will be too quiet or muffled.

Editing:

I found that editing the film was easier than I thought but you needed to be very precise with the timing or your transactions will feel odd. Also you need to take note as to scene order, you can get it surprisingly back to front if you are not careful. Most of the commands using final cut pro were self explanatory however whenever I was stuck a friend could always quickly show me what to do.