Evaluation of Audience Feedback

What they liked

I was surprised to see that they read a sense of light and dark between the police and the criminals. We thought that we had made a sort of balance in perspective between them but the audience got a greater sense that the criminals were the good guys and that the police were the bad guys. However, they did mention a sense of balance so even though they identified the police as strictly the bad guys and the criminals as the good, we succeeded in presenting both their worlds equally so as to avoid a feeling of bias.

What they didn't like

I didn't mind too much about the fact that they thought Ollie and Theo were too young because this was exactly the reaction we wanted, if not so negative. Despite the fact that they criticised this, the fact that it made an impact is what we wanted. Even better, they suggested this was to emphasise the incremental involvement of young people into the world of drugs and crime, which is what we were aiming for.

However, the comment about the jumping about in terms of location during the cross-cutting was a little worrying because though we wanted to keep the audience on edge with the fast cuts and the dynamic of the different places, I learned that it is more difficult to do this when using many different locations because the audience loose a sense of orientation, which then poses a danger of the audience losing interest.

Their interpretation of the narrative

They understood the plot and who the characters were in relation to each other. Which is what we wanted. Luckily, they enjoyed the pace of the thriller and the variety in pace throughout as they thought this was a successful representation of the feeling those kinds of characters (criminals and police) experience in real life situations.

Their idea of a target audience

Interestingly, their idea of a target audience was not what I had anticipated it to be as I thought it would be more attractive to younger years because of the action and the other young characters, Ollie and Theo. They seemed to think it would be more interesting for older audiences because of the content. The opposition between police and criminals suggested a questioning of justice and the functioning of modern government to the audience, which they felt would be subject matter for conversation for more mature audiences.

Our Audience's Feedback

I have presented the group interview we conducted using PowToon. http://www.powtoon.com/

What have I learned from my preliminary task to main task?

Since the preliminary task, I have learned a lot about how to make a successful video.

Mise-en-Scene

In terms of mise-en-scene, I put a lot more research and work into finding effective props, costume and the set up for the thriller while the preliminary task was much more simplistic.

For our thriller, we wanted to have a strong impact on the audience and make them really believe the characters so I looked into costume. I wanted the police to wear the uniform that suited their police rank in order to show a wide variety of different police positions. For the action police, we used two fluorescent police jackets and one black police jacket, which not only gave the video vibrant colours but also carried the theme of danger as yellow with black represent danger. The sweaters on the police sergeants in the car made them look particularly authentic so they were instantly recognizable to the audience and created an impact. Our criminals wore simplistic and naturalistic clothing, but Ted was instructed to wear a black suit to give him an edge and make create a sense of hierarchy within the gang. The bolder choices we made for costume for our thriller enabled us to create much more exciting characters than the mundane clothing in the preliminary task.

We filmed in different locations (e.g. containers, outside a car, around green areas), we used authentic costumes for the police (paying attention to even the type of costume for each type of police officer) and we spent a long time setting the container up with the table and the chemistry set to make it look as criminal as possible with the flour and curry powder for drugs. The preliminary task, in contrast, was not particularly exciting because it was in a classroom which we didn't alter in any way. The lighting was simply the naturalistic light of the room, which resembled home videos and because of the set being particularly dull, this looked rather more amateurish. The lighting we used in the thriller wasn't particularly stylised but was much more interesting because of the contrast between light and dark throughout the video. The majority of the scenes outside with the police were in broad daylight which presented them as more innocent whereas most of the shots of the gang were quite dark. The only light in the container was the lamp over the table Ollie is found working at, which gives the gang members much more of a sense of secrecy and of criminality. This contrast in lighting was particularly useful for the shots of the container doors opening from the inside because they created a certain impact.

A thriller scene inside (dark)

A thriller scene outside

Prelim

For our preliminary task, the only prop we used was a memory stick. Seeing as our setting was just the classroom as we found it, we based a lot of the story in it. Therefore, as there happened to be a computer in the room, we used it to our convenience and decided to add a memory stick to the plot. The memory stick did help to create a sense of mystery, but the props we used in the thriller were much more sophisticated. As we wanted to make the police, exciting and therefore realistic, we wanted to see as many typical police gadgets in the thriller. We managed to find all the police gear, (e.g walkie talkies, guns, police siren, bulletproof vests) We also added elements such as the coffee flask for one of the sergeants in the car and a newspaper for the other as we wanted to really complete the stereotype of police relaxing in cars and give the scene a little bit of colour, which we didn't think about for our preliminary task. For the criminals, we got Theo to carry in a box of guns to add to the sense of danger of the gang. This helped to characterise them further and also to create tension in the police, while in the preliminary task, we did not attempt to help characterisation through props and so the characters were not as recognisable or interesting.

Direction 

When directing our prelim, we were very messy as we did not have much of an idea about how we wanted to our thriller to be or even what happened. I found directing difficult because there was no real sense of who had what job in the group so there was often confusion as to when to cut a short. For instance, when I had the role of director, some other people would say 'cut' before me so I wouldn't get as much of the shot as I wanted. I was assigned definite director of the thriller which made it much easier to get the shots I wanted because I would leave a shot running longer than necessarily required which sometimes was useful as it gave us more options when editing later on. Generally, our group worked much more as a team for the thriller because we had better organisation and preparation for the shooting. As the process functioned well, we were able to experiment a lot more with different shots and different ways of doing things and found that this was much easier than the chaos of shooting the preliminary task.

Camera/Editing

In the prelim, we mainly used shot reverse shot for the dialogue. Besides, that nothing much happened in terms of editing apart from a close up of the foot kicking the door and a close-up of the memory stick being inserted into the computer. Those two close-ups helped to give some more vibrance to the video by starting it with a high energy (from the kick of the door) and by ending it with suspense (created by the close-up of the insertion of the memory stick). Apart from those, the shot-reverse did not create much tension or impact. 

Close up of door kicking in the prelim

Low Angle shot of Simon

In our thriller, we never used shot-reverse shot because there was no real dialogue apart from small talk between the sergeants in the car. For that scene, we wanted their conversation to all be in one shot so as not to draw too much attention to it but also to have that scene move at a slow pace so as to create a bigger contrast with the fast cuts later and heighten the suspense when the audience think the police are about to arrests the criminals. Generally, we used many more features on Final Cut Pro to make our scenes cut together much more cleanly and we were able to convey a narrative throughout without using any dialogue.

Sound

We did not use any sound effects or music in our prelim so the only sound was the dialogue. We did not catch the sound particularly well in the prelim so the volume between the two characters was unbalanced which gave the video a very amateurish feel. In our thriller, we used sound more creatively rather than just dialogue. We had ominous sounds rather than music during the credits in order to set the mood for the thriller. During the cross-cutting, we had no speech or music because we wanted to give a realistic feel but also create tension from the silence. The words we used in our thriller were superficial and meaningless to the plot because we wanted to communicate the feeling through the editing rather than conventionally through the dialogue as we did in the prelim.

How have I used digital technologies in my product?

Pre-production

When preparing our thriller, the first thing we went to was the internet. We used general websites to research drugs, the subject matter of our thriller.

In order to get a better idea of the kind of film we wanted to make, what elements we wanted to have, how to relate our video to the thriller genre, what kind of characters we wanted, what makes thrillers special about and what kind of effect we wanted to have on the audience, we used websites such as ImdB and Youtube. We used ImdB to look for the types of actors in most thrillers and therefore the types of characters they would have. We wanted characters that were instantly recognisable to audiences and would attract them based on what they would expect from them. We also watched trailers and openings of popular thrillers on Youtube in order to observe the editing techniques and the camera angles in order to try to conform to some of those conventions as well as to try and learn how they create suspense or excitement in thrillers. I watched a few thriller films to gain this same information in more depth. From this I learned that trailers and openings are very different, as trailers generally need to be more fast-moving and exciting while openings were allowed to move at a slower pace so that the rest of the thriller had a journey it could make in terms of energy and tension. As we wanted to make the opening to a thriller, the latter is the choice we made.
We also used a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini phone to film the pilot for our thriller, to investigate what kind of shots we would want in our thriller and for screenplay writing, we found this website which was perfect to make our storyboard with: http://www.storyboardthat.com/.

We interviewed some people to get a bette idea of the audience we wanted to aim the thriller at. We conducted the research by typing a set of questions as a Word Document and filming the interviews on a personal I-Phone and I-Pod 5. We used these because they were easy to get hold of, easy to use and therefore efficient because all we really needed was what the interviewee looked like and what they said. Ultimately, we found that we should have used devices with better sound or placed the devices more conveniently because, while some of the clips were perfectly audible, others were comprehensible but difficult to hear in terms of volume. This is something I would pay more attention to next time.


Production

For filming, we used a Sony NX 5 camera. This was useful as it was relatively light and portable, which was important as we wanted to experiment with a lot of different types of shots so we ended up needing to move it around a lot. Most of the video was filmed outside so we did not need artificial lighting for the majority of the filming. For the interior of the container we used 2 point lighting simply from the sunlight and a desk lamp over the table. We wanted to the container to look naturalistic and to have some form of darkness in our thriller.

Post-production

For editing, we used the software 'Final Cut Pro' on an AppleMac. We sometimes experienced difficulties as the computer would often crash and we would sometimes need to wait a considerable amount of time before being able to continue. We would also have to remember saving the project after every vital change, which luckily we did, in case we lost it for good. However, we were glad we were able to use 'Final Cut Pro' as it was easy to learn to use and very effective.
We then uploaded the video on to Youtube in order to make it public.

Here is our thriller annotated with further detail on the different technologies used.

How have I chosen to attract/address my audience?

Who is my target audience?

Crime-thrillers are usually aimed at young adults, so we are targeting audiences of our age group and upwards. Judging by our interviews, horror and psychological thrillers are the most popular sorts of thriller to our peers, but luckily quite a few liked action thrillers which can also be considered as the genre of our thriller. Most of them said they would be happy to see it based on how we have shown alternatives to what is usually seen in thrillers because of the equally shared perspective on the police life as well as the criminal life. However, lots of people said that a danger of our concept would be overdoing the gratuitous action and ultimately making it identical to most action and crime thrillers.

Examples of Target Audience

Mac Phillips

Age: 25

Husband and father

Films: Trance, The Dark Knight, Pulp Fiction, Redirected, The Raid 2

TV Shows: Breaking Bad, Lie to Me, Sherlock, The Good Wife, Dexter

Hobbies: Cricket, Home brewing, Jogging, Home movies

Employment: Banker

Music: John Lennon, Blur, Madness, Kaiser Chiefs, ACDC

Emma Dunson

Age: 22

Games: World of Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Beyond: Two Souls

Films: The Sweeney, Fight Club,

Hobbies: Vlogging, Reading, collecting comics, musician (drummer and guitarist)

Music: Nightwish, Evanescence, Linkin Park, Dubstep, The XX

TV Shows: The Mighty Boosh, True Blood, Game of Thrones, Sherlock, Prison Break.

Employment: Works in HMV in Guilford

Education: Graduate from Effingham School

Bradley Grimshaw

Age: 19

Games: Battlefield, Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, World of Warcraft

Films: The Italian Job, The Sweeney, Trainspotting, In Bruges,

Hobbies: Football, cricket, reading, vlogging

Music: Madness, Blur, Bring Me The Horizon, Tim Minchin

TV Shows: The Mighty Boosh, The IT Crowd, Rules of Engagement,  The Walking Dead, American Horror Story

Employment: Part-Time job working in McDonalds

Education: Graduate from Effingham School

Nathan D’Amato

 

Age: 21

Games: Call of Duty, Slender, Grand Theft Auto V, Bioshock Infinite2, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Assassin’s Creed

Films: Hot Fuzz, The Godfather, Bad Boys II, Point Break, The Departed, Fight Club

Hobbies: Rugby, Paintball, Laser Tag, Reading, video games

Music: Skrillex, White Noise lab, Iron Maiden, ACDC, Black Sabbath

TV Shows: Breaking Bad, Prison Break, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, House

Employment: Part-Time receptionist for the Forestry Commission of Farnham

Education: Exeter University, Aspires to train for the Royal Air force.

Males in their early twenties are often associated with university life, watching action films with mates or playing video games that involve guns and car chases while eating a meal they've just microwaved for two minutes. Our target audience are people like Nathan who have an interest in crime thrillers, police chases and crafty criminals.

We also conducted a few interviews to get a better idea of what people would like about or thriller and how we could make it even better. Here are some of them...

Who would distribute my product?

The top choices for any film maker would be Warner Bros. or Fox. However, for our thriller, this would obviously be aiming too high seeing as the production value is so low. The budget of our film was next to nothing so our film will lack heavy duty special effects, exotic locations, famous actors and famous director. They will never have heard of us as we are first time film makers which would make them particularly careful about choosing our thriller. Since it is essentially aimed at a Niche audience, Warner Bros. would know that the film lacked synergistic value and would not be shown at multiplex cinemas and therefore would not make them a large profit.

In order to save time and money, we would aim for a British rather than an American production company as we think our thriller would be more popular in Britain anyway due to the English accents, the English countryside and of course our beloved police force that we like to 'take the mickey' out of so much. Due to our limited budget, we would initially promote it by talking about it with some friends of our age who are most likely to watch it. We would put the trailer and a few clips on Youtube in order to spark an interest, and we would put it on Itunes and Vimeo (charging for it) to increase our budget. We would also create a Facebook page for it in order for more people to hear of it, to make it easier to show friends, and to make people take it as seriously as possible as a good film. We would send links of opening of the film via social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace) in order to get as many views as possible on Youtube and therefore increase its popularity. For the distribution of the film, we looked at production companies such as Warp, Vertigo, Film4, BBC and Momentum Picture.

We decided ultimately to go for Vertigo Films. They have released films like The Sweeney, which is about London cops with action scenes. Sweeney has rather high production values but Vertigo have also released films such as Spring Breakers, which is quite a low budget film despite having some very well known actors. As Vertigo have expressed an interest in crime thrillers like The Sweeney and in low budget films like Spring Breakers, hopefully they would see the potential in our film for an exhilarating and at times comical crime thriller. If the movie became a success, they could make action figures out of some of the characters for fans.

distribution in the UK is quite difficult as We would try and get funding from the National Lottery and from private investors.
To promote our film on a larger scale, we would aim to try and get it shown at a film festival, such as the Raindance Film Festival in London. This would hopefully attract an audience with an interest in crime thrillers and police pursuits (mainly males between the ages of 15 and 30) as well as secondary audiences (females of the same age range and older males). We would first try and get some free screenings done of the film at as many multiplex cinemas as possible while placing posters in public places.

How have I chosen to represent social groups in my thriller?

Class

In our thriller, the criminal gang are ultimately represented as being superior to the police force who are outsmarted and lead to the wrong container. We show Ted's superiority through a low angle shot of his feet as he walks out of the container. Both Ted and the police constables have no dialogue in the thriller which makes them superior to the the police sergeants, who are officially the highest degree of authority in the thriller. The silence signifies how heavily they invest themselves in the job and what they believe.
However, the criminals themselves appear disorganised and undisciplined because of Ollie misbehaving in the container. In terms of mise-en-scene, we set up the container with a table, lab equipment and used curry powder and flour to make it look like he was meant to be cooking drugs. We got him to make lines with the flour to show that he was misusing them rather than doing his job.

Within the police hierarchy, the police sergeants in the car who are higher in rank to the police on the raid are represented as lazy through mise-en-scene because they are shown sitting in the car, chatting and snacking while waiting for the other three police men to carry out their orders. The three police constables sent in to raid the container are represented as the action heroes through the use of low angle shots, as well as their stern facial expressions. We used mise-en-scene to create this idea, because they are shown eating food and drinking tea while the other police are on a dangerous armed mission. Their mundane improvised chatting makes them come across as unfocused as well as uneducated which subverts the stereotype of police being 'on the ball'. In contrast, the other policemen who remain silent are shown as superior because they are clearly focused on their work and conform to the stereotype of action heroes in films.

Age

Our character Ollie conforms to the stereotype of young men behaving inappropriately because he is found in the container misusing the drugs that the gang are trying to sell. With Ted as the figure of authority, he is presented as dependent and inferior to him by the way he is sitting down and Ted stands over him and hits him. Ollie, though clearly upset by his through his facial expression, is shown as helpless and dependent on Ted. The camera shot from inside the container when Ted opens it from outside shows Ollie's point of view. The change from darkness to light on Ted's opening the container signifies how much Ted features in his life, stereotypically representing his age as submissive to Ted's age. He remains silent except for one word: 'again?' His limited use of words shows how confined he working under Ted and the pressure put on him at his age. The word 'again', signifies that because he conforms to the rebellious stereotype of his age, he receives the same treatment from Ted frequently.
Theo, on the other hand, subverts this teenage stereotype by offering help to Ted and carrying the box of guns without complaint. We used a box of guns for Theo to carry as part of mise-en-scene to signify his submissive status to his boss. Both teenagers conform to the stereotype of younger people being inferior to older adults.

Gender

Every character in our thriller is male which signifies that the male gender is more involved in dangerous situations, signifying that the world of criminal activity and crime fighting is very much a man's world. Both groups, criminal and police, are represented as high status in the thriller. This reflects negatively on women because it implies that women do not find themselves in high ranks at work. It also represents the male gender as corrupt, greedy for money through illegal means and violent.

How have I used, matched or subverted conventions in my product?

Sounds for Thriller

We decided to avoid using too much dialogue because we preferred to make an opening that introduced the characters visually. This is because I found that most thrillers introduce the characters in a cliched fashion by trying to sneak information about them straight away through what they said. Rather than doing this, I preferred to show the characters' relationships to one another by showing them acting naturally which wouldn't have entailed much dialogue. For instance, where we see Ted hitting Ollie over the head in the container, this is a much more interesting way of signifying Ted's power over Ollie and Ollie's attitude towards Ted visually rather than through dialogue. Ollie then replies with one word: 'Again?'. I liked how in one word, he communicated his lifestyle, his attitude towards Ted and his vulnerability.

Incidentally, we also found while editing that we like the sound of the engine of the jeep because it was more impactful than we though it would be when it's audible before it appears in the shot. Not only was the sound somewhat pleasant but it also became a kind of symbol of the drug gang. The contrast between the moments of silence and the loud rumbling of the engine helped to create a dynamic throughout the piece and keep the audience intrigued throughout.

 It also The non-diegetic sounds we used in our thriller were mostly used from the sound effects directory on Final Cut Pro. We decided to use eerie music for the titles in order to set the atmosphere for a suspenseful thriller. Additionally to the music, we also added non-diegetic eerie sound effects with the cross-cutting in order to further the suspense.

Account of Editing

Account of Editing

We began by sorting all our clips into files, naming them 'good' and 'bad', in order to narrow down our selection of clips. We sectioned into ‘bad’ all the clips that we knew wouldn’t be at all appropriate due to composition of shots, but also kept some that were not perfect for the ‘good’ file so we could have options if we needed them. After placing all the desirable clips in the ‘good’ file, we created more files within to organise the selection of shots into scenes, such as ‘container’, ‘car’ and ‘raid’, so as to save time when looking for clips.

After having sorted all our clips into files and sub-files in order for easier access and faster decision-making, we chose our first clip to be the Jeep arriving at the container. We liked the fact that we could hear the engine before the car appeared because it built tension, which we felt was important for a thriller. It also created an impact so we thought it would be good to start with to really set up the scene for the audience. Before having Ted open the container, we wanted to somehow introduce the theme of drugs, so we used a close up of Ollie’s hands making lines with the drugs. We found that not only did this introduce the theme quickly, it also created a sense of mystery because the audience didn’t yet know whose hands they were supposed to be.

We decided to begin the container scene with a clip of Ted opening the container from inside. This was to give a view from Ollie’s perspective because the change from dark to light gave Ted a sense of power creating a binary fission between Ollie and Ted in terms of age. We had difficulties using the full clip, however, because it slowed the pace of the action too much but also there was a clunking sound when Ted lowered the ramp. It looked clumsy and quite comical as it made Ted look undignified, which is exactly what we didn’t want because we wanted the audience to think of him as superior and feared as well as admired by his employees. We tried cutting the clip with a wide shot of Ollie looking up, which we found worked because it showed that Ollie had acknowledged Ted’s arrival as well as showing the audience the interior of the container and therefore informing them more about the world of these criminals.

We experimented with close ups of the police sergeants, with one bringing food to his mouth and the other doing the same with a coffee flask. We initially thought we might have been able to use them to set the police scene as well as giving police a negative representation by portraying them as lazy, but we then decided the clips looked too comical and wouldn’t have created the effect we wanted.

We felt that we should try to push the tension even further by beginning the entire video with a shot of the sergeants in the car to create the sense throughout the sequence with the gang that they’re being watched. We stopped sticking to the timeline as we found that we could make it more impactful by going with what we felt because of seeing how the clips looked in real life.

We initially kept the scene in the container separated from scenes the police being ordered to go in but then, in order to heighten the action, we used cross-cutting between the action in the container and the police constables sneaking around in order to really engage the audience by anticipating an attack and making the audience worry for the gang and want them gang to leave the container. We were very happy with this change as it created a much more anti-climax when the police opened the wrong container but it also created a lot more suspense, which made it much more exciting and also gave the audience a chance to connect with the gang by making them worry for them.

We had a clip where one of the sergeants picked up a Walkie-talkie and shouted ‘go-go-go’ but we decided it didn’t sit right with the tension we had managed to build so we simply used a medium shot of one sergeant noticing a disturbance and then cut to more action happening in the container, followed by more shots of the police constables moving for an attack.

We used a shot of the police constables sneak up to the container for behind them the time it took between them entering the shot and actually opening the door was too long and it undid the exciting tension that had just been building up which we thought would be disastrous for our thriller. We tried increasing the speed of the shot and found that it helped. However, there was a strange blurry affect in the movement by speeding it up. We tried not using that shot and just using a shot from the inside of them opening the container and found that this worked much better than we thought it would because it was a lot more impactful than if we had seen them approaching the container. In terms of continuity, it worked better anyway because we hadn’t previously seen the gang shut the container.

When editing the shot of the police from the front of the container where the deception is revealed, we cut it too soon and didn’t allow enough time for the audience to take in the twist before the head of police reacted by hitting the door. We extended the pause in that shot before the reaction and learned that the smallest amounts of time can make all the difference to the impact created on screen.

During the editing process, I focused on the order of the shots and on trying to create a narrative, which featured the gang and the police equally in terms of perspective. My role was to make sure we used enough clips and give the right amount of screen time to the police and the gang, as well as keeping an eye on continuity. We worked well as a group since I would focus on us using the right clips, others focused in cleaning up the sound, adjusting the pace, inspecting the progress and finding effective non-diegetic sounds to enhance our thriller.

I enjoyed editing because I learned a lot about how much timing contributes to the effect created by a film. It made me realise just how significant each moment is in setting a pace or having an impact and taught me what makes successful films meet their standards. Making the shots in the cross-section shorter made all the difference to whether any tension was created in the film, and the longer clips in the beginning helped to establish the characters and the situation as well as create a contrast with the faster cuts, thus making the video more engaging.

It was also fun to see how different shots, which weren’t designed to fit together conveniently, do so and add a comical effect. For instance, we had a close up of a sergeant looking forward and nodding before twitching his mouth and we also had a medium wide shot of him conveniently twitching his mouth again before clocking the gang situation and saying ‘hang on’. It was satisfying to cut the two scenes together at the twitch because of how he had conveniently done it twice, but it was also a very good cut because it showed one moment of him being certain and looking in control of the situation and connected nicely with him suddenly realising something is wrong.

Software: Final Cut Pro