During the very beginning of my thriller opening, I overlaid the titles on the establishing shots as to maintain a decent tempo from the very start; nearly all thriller films use this technique, as cutting to a shot of a title on a blank screen does not look professional, nor does it help to achieve a fast tempo. The titles also faded in and out, sometimes at the same time which indirectly achieved an almost mysterious sense. A thriller does not live up to its name unless it can in fact, thrill the audience and excite them via the use of suspense and tension. So in this sense, I didn’t challenge the natural conventions of a thriller, I instead achieved said suspense and tension through the use of quick cuts, fast tempo and diagetic/non-diagetic sound. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, he used an extreme close up during the shower scene which I also incorporated into my film to show the fear in the lost character’s eyes. I combined this with a quick cut to a close-up, and low-key lighting so the audience would be left slightly disorientated and confused, not unlike the character in the scene. The plot primarily revolves around the character that becomes lost inside the abandoned building, ignorant to the other entity following him throughout his journey; a common template for thriller storylines. The opening hinted toward the subsequent narrative; that the other person inside the building will follow them and place them in a menacing situation. The non-diagetic music we played in the background of the opening clips and throughout others was fast paced, combining that with the quick cuts etc helped to build a fast tempo, consequently suspense and tension too. The lighting throughout most of the film was low-key and chiaroscuro, especially towards the end when the character is lost, in-keeping with many psychological thrillers codes and conventions. However, our thriller did challenge certain aspects of the mainstream idea of thrillers; our protagonist (the lost character) was not particularly strong, brave or even an adult. He was instead the exact opposite, a terrified teenager which connotes arrogance and weakness. Also, many thrillers such as Die Hard or Se7en reveal who their antagonist is and his actions; in this case an ex-military personal and an arguably insane serial killer. It is common in crime/drama thrillers to do this, however I chose to allow our antagonist to remain anonymous and “in the shadows”. This in a way develops the thriller genre, as the audience wonder more about who the antagonist is, or what he is going to do, achieving a sense of apprehension and anticipation.
Only four characters were featured in the cast for my thriller opening. The three urban-explorers were all male, although they were multicultural which provided diversity. They were made out to be students, who were the sons of the skilled working/working class. In all honesty, this accurately portrays a common urban-exploration group; as they are normally multicultural young males who are predominantly in the skilled working/working/E class social grades. The protagonist of the story is a young white male, which is slightly unconventional in that he’s much younger than a normal protagonist for a thriller. The fourth character was a young white male, although he was made out to be a possible gang member, providing negative connotations of “the youth of today”; his intentions clearly contrasted to the good-willed nature of the other three characters that were shown in a generally good light. It is unconventional however, that the protagonist is not someone the male demographic can look up to and idolise, instead being someone who shows elements of something they’d avoid being (weak and scared).
The best way to distribute my film would be virally and through word of mouth, due to the lack of budget and resources. This would be predominantly through social networking sites where advertising costs are non-existent; websites such as Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, MySpace etc. I would also promote my film on blogs and forums created specifically for discussing independent films, which would help increase popularity through word of mouth. Due to the diverse users of these sites, (in terms of age, gender etc) this could help considerably to promote my film to a much wider audience. It is safe to assume that many big-name companies such as Working Title wouldn’t fund my film as I am not part of a well established company, nor do I possess the luxuries of popular actors or a portfolio of previous works to show I could make them enough money to make it worth their while. This is why I would pitch my ideas to independent companies/studios that specialise in developing niche films from people such as me. If I received enough money from said company for advertising, I would promote my film through billboards and flyers placed in the city in which the film is located as it would excite the people who see it more, as they live there. I could also hold auditions to unknown actors who want to get their foot in the door and get some work done to add to their portfolio for future jobs, which I would announce via social networking sites and message boards for budding and upcoming actors. I could also hold polls where anyone can vote, to alter certain aspects of the film such as the narrative; this would help promote my film even more, because people would want to see it knowing they had an effect on its finalised result.
The results from my questionnaire show that my target audience was working class 20-25 year olds, although reflecting on this as well as taking into account my proposed advertising techniques, I now see this is only a small portion of the whole audience. My film thankfully lacks any factors such as gore, sex or excessive violence which could potentially give my film a high age rating, which means I can now target a much wider audience. As my film would be advertised excessively on social networking sites, predominantly used by teenagers, they would make up a fair percentage of my audience. Also, as my film is set in Birmingham and advertised greatly there, my audience will mainly be people from Birmingham, who hear about it through either word of mouth or through billboards/posters. However, my main target audience is still males in the 12-21 age range from a working class background, as they will be the people who would consume the advertising and receive the most enjoyment (I hope) from the film, as they are the demographic who will be able to relate and connect with the characters in the film and certain issues raised within it.
To attract my audience I incorporated elements in my film to which they can relate. A good example is where I used Lotus Flower by Radiohead as the soundtrack. The song is extremely popular within my targeted audience, as it’s off Radiohead’s (who are the most popular band on Spotify) new album. I also attempted to make the character profiles appeal to my audience by making them more real, someone they can relate to and connect with. Possibly the most important element in attracting their attention was to make my film as tense and climatic as I could, which I achieved through the fast tempo and quick cuts used in the opening. I received positive critical feedback about the titles in my film, saying that the cross-fade between titles and having them appear as another fades out was crucial in keeping the audience hooked and not losing the tempo. Also, I believe the storyline is genuinely intriguing, as the entire urban-exploration scene has barely been touched on in mainstream media, making my film stand out from the crowd with its refreshing plot and narrative. To attract my audience in terms of marketing at the cinema, I would create a unique poster which would make people point and get them interested. This could be through the use of an interactive campaign (augmented reality promotion/advertising technique) that would, again, help my film stand out from the crowd and not fall into a group to be classified as another corporate film which are a dime a dozen.
Thanks to this project I have learnt many new things about producing a product with help from technology, and how much effort and patience is needed. In terms of camerawork, I learnt that tripod’s are an extremely useful tool for creating steady pans and static shots. I also learnt that tracking shots where I had to use the camera as a handheld were difficult to keep steady; although in my film it added an effect which worked well for that particular shot. Which leads me on to another point; that sometimes a shot can work out better than initially planned. Contrasting to this, I learnt that a shot must sometimes be taken several times to achieve a good take; however I received a feeling of immense satisfaction when a shot works well. The fact that a shot sometimes must be took multiple times isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it provided me with more than enough footage when I came to editing the film, which is much better than not having enough. I personally found that using Final Cut Pro was quite tedious, as I have previously done work in (arguably) better video editing programs such as Adobe After Effects. However, it is useful to know how to use a wide array of programs, and in Final Cut Pro I learnt how to trim shots, transition clips together well, speed shots up, colour correct clips, fade audio out and create aesthetically pleasing titles. I found the editing had a much greater effect on the final product than I initially anticipated, making it more effective and creating better visual and audio effects. In particular, I managed to remove the noise created by the wind in one scene where speech was used, making the conversation much clear and understandable. I found that blogging on BlogSpot was an easy process, and was not hard to get used to at all. Although certain adjustments could be made to provide a better blogging experience; for example when uploading an image to a post, it was trivial and tedious to position it correctly. Besides this minor flaw, blogging was an easy enough process.
The preliminary task helped me thoroughly to realise how much planning the actual project would need, and to develop my skills at working in a group and operating equipment. I believed that the filming went well during the preliminary task, but when we looked back through the footage during editing I realised that almost everything we recorded would have to be re-shot due to lack of shot quality, which was down to no planning. Luckily we had enough time to do this, so we planned out every shot we were going to record before we did it, which made the filming and editing operate more smoothly. This helped me to realise that although we had enough time to reshoot this task, we may not be so lucky when it came down to the actual thing. Consequently I spent a fair amount of time planning out where the camera would be stationed during each shot in the actual film and how it would be choreographed. I also made the decision to record some shots several times so we had more footage than we needed, meaning the actual filming was not spread across many sessions. It became apparent through this preliminary task that there was going to be a strong possibility of opinion clashing between different members of the group; however this turned out to not be as much a problem as we once thought as we were all on a similar wavelength when it came to deciding how the film would look. There were 3 members in this group and I decided to take on the responsibility of working on the editing, which meant putting the clips together into a sequence. This gave me basic knowledge of how to use Final Cut Pro and its tools, so I had some experience when going into editing the actual film; however due to previous experience in other projects, Sam and I together decided to work on the editing to make the process run smoother. We found the equipment and video cameras easy enough to operate, however I only had control over the camera during certain shots, as I needed to be in most of the shots myself. During the recording we covered how to effectively create a shot-reverse-shot scene, which was to record all the lines from one person’s side, then switch to the others. This meant there was less switching and the camera positioning would be more consistent, which helped to save us a lot of time during the actual film when we used a shot-reverse-shot. We also covered how to cut to a match on action, which we implemented into our film. Finally we learnt how the 180 degree rule works, and created a pan following myself walk across a room; this helped us to not break the 180 degree rule during our actual film. The post below this one shows our preliminary task.
