Evaluation Activity 7

Evaluation Activity 6

Evaluation Activity 5

By Thomas Beal

Evaluation Activity 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our potential target audience is those who are within the age range of the rating of our film, which is 15 so within the age range of 15-30 is the audience we're looking towards to view our media product, Twelve.

Name: Kevin Wilberforce
Age: 18

He is a big film fan and likes genres related to crime and psychology. He enjoys films such as Phone booth, Silence of the lambs and Fight club, which are all considered as sub-genre films, making them psychological thrillers, which links in with our film as it leads onto an enigma. Kevin is a student with a part time job and has quite a good social life, as well as being the right target age for our film. He could relate to the film as the film is almost a mind game which he could possibly relate to after a night out. He likes quite heavy music and shops in places like All Saints.

We believe our film to be viewed by more of a male audience due to its violence and brutal behaivour. So get a fair view, we decided to research a girl as well as a boy for our film, Twelve.

Name: Georgina Shick

Age: 19

She enjoys films with the genre as thriller, her favourite films are Taken, Se7en, and Cape fear. She is currently a student with a part time job like Kevin. She has an ok social life as well as being in the target range of our target audience. She likes music which is in the charts and shops is shops such as topshop and primark.

The main reason I chose these two individuals is simply because they are both in the target age range of our audience, 15-30. With their differences in genres, we can establish who is more likely to see our film, Twelve.

Evaluation Activity 3

Evaluation Activity 2

We decided to base our main protagonist played by George on Edward Norton's character in the film Fight Club. This is because they both had several simlilaralities, not just on how they look but on their personalities and the problems they face. They both are common people who have normal life's and jobs which is shown through the plain casual clothes they each wear. We made sure that George wore plain clothes to get this across to the audience that he is just a normal person. The whole idea of this is to show how he would change throughout the film and shows how his mental problems would affect him.


In fight club Edward Norton's character meets someone called Tyler Durden played by Brad Pitt who he quickly befriends. He almost sees him as a role modal and an escape from his boring everyday life. Tyler plays a big part on Edward Norton, changing totally who he is. They both set up a fight club, but things start to get out of hand and they fallout. Tyler starts doing things which Edward's Norton's character doesn't agree with. In the end it turns out that Tyler is actually apart of Edward's character and is actually just a figment of his imagination. Tyler is actually his dark personality taking over which he is not aware of. We thought this was a great twist and tried to incorporate it into our own character in our film.


Many of Edward Norton's mannerisms influenced us when we were thinking of characters for our film, and this film and character gave us many ideas on how to make the audience feel uneasy and make them ask many questions about the particular character. This was because we wanted to create several enigmas and wanted our audience to question everything about the opening, especially our character and the strange problem he has. As normal as our character looks, he is very unique because of these blackouts he seems to get at the time twelve. Our character does horrific things in these blackouts he seems to get and has no control over and no recall of what has happened when he wakes back up. He then has the question in his head of why he is doing this and has to do something before this happens again. 


The difference between the two characters is that our character is aware of his mental illness, while Edward Norton's character isn't. This was so we could develop on our character more to show how he is affected throughout the film. This is key to a film, as we found from our research, because it helps engage the audience as it makes them actually care about the character and what happens to them.

Evaluation Activity 1

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

The title of the film
The title of our media production is twelve, this is because there is an ongoing theme throughout the media production of the main character looking back at his watch as the time draws ever nearer to twelve o clock where he begins to get flashbacks of the terrible crimes in which he has committed. The title twelve goes along with the theme that the film is a race against time thriller, this can be compared with other thrillers where there is a race against time such as "Taken" and "Phone Booth" from this you can see that the title goes against the conventions of the normal titles that thrillers are given, as there are few thrillers that are given titles that are just a number, normally the title is based around the setting of the thriller or the main action that takes place in the thriller.

The setting/location of the film
The majority of the media production was filmed in a derelict building in a field in Ongar. The derelict building has obviously been worn and torn and it already had alot of mise en scene inside it, such as graffiti and broken roof beams and smashed up bricks. This was why it was a very good location because it fits in with the codes and conventions of a thriller and made the whole feeling of the film a lot more intense and scary to watch.

Costumes and Props
Costumes and props were an extremely important part of our media production and took a lot of perfecting, at first we decided upon a plain costume which was just a white shirt/t-shirt with blue jeans, and we were using red acrylic paint as a prop for blood. However we found that this costume did not suit the codes and conventions of a thriller and that the red acrylic paints looked extremely fake as a substitute for blood, therefore we decided upon changing the costume to a more gangster like look, with dark jeans and a dark smart jacket, also we decided not to use the acrylic paints as blood. We also found out that props were very important to use in order to make the thriller more scary so when filming in the derelict building we made our own Polaroid photos out of laminated paper and put them onto a washing line with pegs, this gave a very good effect and made the thriller a lot more scary and intense in this scene.



This is a picture of the final costume.

This is a picture of the props we used as polaroid photos on a washing line.









Camera work and Editing
Throughout out media production we used a lot of very innovative shots in order to enhance the professionalism of our thriller. Because we decided upon re-shooting after our first day of filming, we decided to make a very detailed storyboard with a lot of very different yet effective shots.


This is a picture of Christian taking a low angle shot of me.

This is the result of the low angle shot.

This is a picture of Christian taking a very innovative shot between the feet of Charlie.

This is the result of the shot between Charlie's feet.






Title font and Style
The title of our thriller is twelve, this is because the thriller is a race against time thriller and throughout the thriller there is a consistent reference back to the characters watch in order to check the time which is drawing ever closer to twelve o clock. The font of our title is very stereotypical of that of a thriller, there is a dark background and then large bold writing which has a slight blur to it in order to give it a tense and scary effect.


Here is the picture of our opening sequence, this is the font of our title.










Genre and how the opening suggests It
Obviously the genre of our production is a thriller, however it is extremely important that you get this across in the opening few seconds of the production in order to make sure that you capture your audience and that they  know what genre they are watching. In our thriller we done this by having the opening scene of our thriller in a dark woodland alley, this is the stereotypical setting for a thriller, a dark place with bushes and trees overhead. This meant that as soon as viewers watched our production they new straight away that it was a thriller.

This is a picture of the setting in the opening scene that really establishes what the genre of the production is.














By  George Hick 

Audience Feedback

In the first month of uploading our video to Youtube we have had a good number of views and some comments from other Youtube users offering there opinion and with use of the "like dislike" bar we can tell how widely our video is liked. With one dislike to four likes we are confident that our film will be liked by the audience. User comments include "sick, i like the ending" showing the user enjoyed the film and gave a specific reason. Another user commented "shit that is insane! and awesome!! great work guys!" this shows that the user clearly likes our film and that the viewer is part of our target audience by his use of vocabulary. Other comments after posting on Facebook said that viewers liked the music for its intensity and feeling of dread and confusion, and that the editing was clean and crisp, demonstrating good use of the editing software and a well thought out editing process. Viewers also stated that the protaganist was well dressed and suited the part with costume and props.

Below is a graph of the video statistics and who has viewed the video and how old they are. This is a good indication for us because it is showing that the video is being used by our target audience.

By Thomas Beal

Editing Diary

I started editing on one of my programs at home called Sony Vegas. I went through at first and made a rought edit putting all of the clips together and it was around 3 minutes long. It took me around an hour to do the rough edit and and then I moved on to do the main edit.

I started at around 6pm and finished editing around 8:30pm. The editing at some points was quite tricky but on a whole was quite fun to do. I enjoyed putting everything together and editing the thriller as a whole because it was a challenge and I knew how much it ment to our group.

When I rendered out the video the first time, I rendered out in a bad size and it wasnt able to be uploaded to youtube. I then rerendered in to 1280 x 720 and it worked fine. I then copied a version onto a disk.

By Charlie Head

Final Cut of our Film "Twelve"

'Twelve' Film Poster

This was a poster I created for our thriller, Twelve.

By Charlie Head

Location Map

We knew to film in Ongar as we already had key locations of where to film there. Here is a map of Ongar with the locations we decided to film. As finding the right locations was key we done some extra location hunting and found many new locations that suited our film as well as the key ones we already had in mind. As our locations were quite far apart we had to travel long distances between each location and therefore had to plan carefully where we were going to film first so we could save as much time as we could and make sure our continuuty was right.


Location 1- This was the open field and the long lane. The film would start here as I thought the establishing shot of the lane would work well as it gives the audience a clear picture of where the character is. The lane then leads onto a open field for the next scene where the character collapses. The open field emphasis that he is desperate to get away and the openness shows he is vulnerable.


Location 2- This is the concrete room. Its derelict and dirty which adds to the mystery of when the character wakes up. The graffiti around the walls of the building adds to the mise en scene by making it more gritty and urban. The hole in the side of the building also added to the lighting making several shadows.


Location 3- This is the derelict barn. This is where our main character takes one of his victims in the flashbacks. We thought it would make an interesting location as it has some nice features such as the curled barbed wire.


Location 4- This was the forest with the empty moat. This was another flashback scene which worked well as the gradient varied so we could have high angle shots of the man with the kinfe and the body laying down in the ditch.

Location 5- Derelict swimming pool. This was the last flashback where we filmed. This was another unique location we used as we used the flashbacks to present a variety of locations to make the shots look more interesting. The broken tiles and crumbled walls all done this.

Diary of the Re-Shoot

For the re-shoot we decided that we had to be alot more organised as before in the first shooting we were not very organised and spent alot of time deciding what shots we were going to use. In order to be more organised Christian had a very detailed storyboard that told us exactly what shots we were going to use and exactly what mise en scene was needed in the shot. This helped greatly and after meeting at the Two Brewers pub in Ongar at 4 o clock we started walking to our location knowing exactly what we were going to do.

We used our story board and starting shooting straight away we were using the same locations so we knew how to set things up this was apparent all throughout the first shot on the story board. We then went onto the second shot on the story board and so on, and as a result of such a detailed story board we managed to complete the whole re-shoot in just over four hours. This was very good and shows how planning is key when shooting.


Here are some pictures of the various things done throughout the entire filming process in order to make the film as good as possible. 

Here is a picture of Christian filming a low angle shot  of the main character, this is to show that the character is in a dominating position and should be feared.

Here is a picture of Christian filming a high angle shot whilst the main character is on the floor just regaining consciousness, this is used to show that the character is in a vulnerable position after just passing out. 

Here is a picture of Christian and Charlie setting up the camera in order to make sure it is in the right position.

Here is a picture of the setting where we filmed one of the main scenes in our production. You can also see the props that we set up with the cloths line with hanging pictures in it in order to make the building feel scary and as though a crime has been committed. 

Here is a picture of Christian aligning a very innovative low angle shot between  the feet of Charlie in order to capture a low angle image of another character but with Charlie's feet in the shot. The reason for this shot was to give the point of view from behind Charlie to get a different aspect of the situation, also the fact that Charlie is in the shot makes the atmosphere alot more intense as you know he is a victim.   

This is a picture taken from the same place as the recording camera was situated in order to show how the high angle shot was used in order to make the victim look vulnerable when laying in a ditch unconscious. 


By George Hick

Character Profile

Name: Daniel Sheen


Age: 22


Occupation: Works in a local bar mixing drinks and cocktails.

Bio: A very quiet man who is very socially inept, he suffers from nightmares and bad dreams and he doesn't know why.


Family: He has no recollection of his mother or father as they died when he was young, however he knows that he has an uncle that lives in Australia.


Criminal Record: Conviction of shoplifting at the age of 15.

Interests: Very interested in computer games. 

By George Hick

More Music

Freeplay

http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?t=f&i=21

Floater

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http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=11&i=69&t=f

Dark Angel

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http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=21&i=69&t=f

Drones

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http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=21&i=69&t=f

Stardust collector

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http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=11&i=69&t=f

Concussion

Concussion Reprise

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Changing The Costumes for the Second Shooting

After the first days filming we took our footage back to school and had a look at it before the editing process. However we decided upon reflection that the footage was not of a satisfactory standard, and as a result of this we decided that we are going to re-shoot the film entirely in order to improve it.


One of the main improvements that we thought would help would be to change the costume because it was also very basic and not very interesting and didn't make the thriller any better, so as a result of this we decided to change the costume.


The changes that we are going to make are not going to be to drastic however we have decided that a smarter approach will be better. The initial costume for most of the characters is a blue pair of jeans with a white shirt untucked and with the top button undone and also after the death scene we used an acrylic paint in order to replicate blood, however when we looked at this on the camera it looked very tacky and fake.


Because of this we decided to change the costume of the main character to a pair of smart black jeans and a smart jacket and this will make the character look smarter and have more of a sense of authority as the person is eventually going to be in the commanding role when he is killing people. we also decided not to use blood in the re-shoot.



Here is a picture of Charlie wearing what we decided the costumes should initially look like with the fake blood. 













Here is a picture of me wearing the changed costume which is a much more smart look and you can see that we do not use fake blood here as it looked tacky, and this more smart approach makes the main character look a lot more threatening.  










By George Hick

Re-Shooting

After reviewing our footage we believe that there are some fundamental pieces of filming that we missed and so the film ios very difficult for a viewer to understand. Also, we are not happy with the length of our starting scene, and the variety of shots in these opening scenes was poor. Our character is seen to be running but there is no clear reason why, and with the long shots it is difficult to see the anxiousness of the character. As we believe that our storyline is good we are reluctant to chnage our story, but the shots used to portray our story could be changed. To develop this scene we want to move this running all to a point of view shot, so that is very easy for the viwer to realise the anxiousness of the character, and can also be seen as desperation with the addition of heavy breathing. This way you could also get establishing shots of the area.

We also need to shoot our final location for the thriller. The location is an abandoned concrete building and we were not able to film in this location on our first day due to the not having our photo's taken and printed on polaroid camera print paper. Here we want our main character to wake up and not understand why he is there and how he got there. With the polaroid pictures hanging along the the ceiling of the building and when our character looks upon them it will induce a flashback where we will edit in our previous footage with a black and white effect to give the feeling of the event being in the past. When the flashback ends the character will be seen to be panicing and disorientated, and also desperate. This will happen three times with all three flashbacks with the angle of the shot beoming higher and higher to give the feeling of the character becoming more and more vulnerable.

By Thomas Beal

First Day Filming

We chose to film on Saturday 19th March and met up in Ongar. Our day started off a bit late as me, Christian and Tom were at the meeting point at 11am, whereas George woke up a bit late and didn’t meet up with us till 11:30. After the small delay, we went off and George then realised he forgot one of the main props, which was his watch. We also then realised that the main prop of the entire film that we needed was the knife, which I wasn't prepared to bring as I didnt want to carry it around, incase we got stopped. Which meant that George had to go out of his way in order to get a knife, this took up alot of time however,  once we had that, we started filming, and at first, it was hard to actually know where to start. Our first shot we think will be George walking quite anxiously and he keeps looking at his watch. At first, we had to do this shot around 3-4 times as we had a few problems with the tape in the camera. We then went on to film our next shots and a couple of times we changed the location of the shots. This was because as we were filming, we came across good locations as we walked past them. Once we had finished filming in the location we went back to the high street and got some food. By the time we finished lunch, it was around 2:00.

We then went to our next location which was around 10 minutes away. It was quite hard to film in this location because it was close to the public and our man prop was a knife. We had to cover the knife in red paint to look like blood. On top of this location being near the open, houses looked onto our location also. We had to have someone in a ditch with a black bag over their head, and then someone with a knife. It didn’t look like a film from someone who didn’t know what was going on, so we had to film this part quite fast.

Once we finished the 'dippers' location, we then moved onto the abandoned barn which was on private land, so we had to be careful in this location also. We found a really good spot in the barn as there was barbed wire all around and it looked quite menacing. We only took one of take of this and if when I edit it, it looks quite bad, we will have to redo this location. It wasn’t really hard to get to, it’s just the fact that its private land so if we do have to go back there, we will have to make it quick again.

We then moved along to the derelict swimming pool which was a good location as the fact that it was falling down and derelict, made it fit the genre perfectly. This location took quite a while to get right as in the three flashbacks, we didn’t want them to be repetitive and so we had to change what the murderer was doing.

Overall it was a really successful first shoot, but we do need to go back to Ongar to finish off our last location of the concrete room of George waking up after he had blacked out. We also may need to do a few more retakes of some of our shots in case they aren’t very effective.

By Charlie Head

Final Storyboard

This is a storyboard of our final film, which we carefully followed while making our film. The first time we filmed, the footage we got was very poor and just didn't look right for our film. This was because we knew where to film but we didn't plan it carefully enough and we ended up arguing of what shot to actually use when we was there. I then decided we should re-film the whole project so I made a shot by shot storyboard telling us what shot to use and where. This was very successful as in the end we managed to agree to re-film it and it turned out  much better than we anticipated. 

Marketing our Thriller Film

To promote and find an audience for our thriller, we are going to create a promotional poster of our film. This is to attract our audience and to also draw a new audience. The poster has to be enticing and present an element of fear to follow the film we have made. We also plan to have the poster centred around 12 o clock on the watch as this is a major theme with the film, so we want the poster to be moulded around a prop, like the film poster of Halloween. This poster is centred around the killer's knife which we would also like to include in our poster.

We also want to create a trailer for the film. A short montage of key moments from our shooting should be included to show the character and a certain degree of the violence that is suggested in the film. The trailer should also give details of the production companies, key names and key dates, most importantly the release date.

By Thomas Beal

Marketing

Films can be marketed in a variety of different ways. In the past, posters and billboards where the only possible way to create a buzz for a film and to attract an audience. A film targeted for a mass audience would be able to put up posters in mass public places, like tube stations, big tourist attractions and city centres where huge amounts of possible audience walk through everyday. More specific films to a niche market would have to be more precise in where they put their posters, and would have to target certain area's, for example a thriller film would do well to target in a typically adult area, like Camden.



Iron Man 2 Billboard in Times Square



More modern ways of marketing are through the media. Advertisements through television are very effective. Trailers are the most common way of TV advertising and will give the viewer a snippet of the film to promote and intrigue the viewer. In a thriller the trailer will give a very brief outline of the film and will raise suspense and dread towards the plot. They may even offer an enigma to the film to entice the audience to go to the see the film. Radio advertisements are also effective and can target to a niche audience much easier than television, for example a Gothic thriller would be able to advertise to a large part of its audience through a Gothic radio station.

A new way of advertising that is recently becoming very effective is Internet and viral advertising. Fan pages on Facebook can generate massive hype to a film and by posting updates to the film and exclusive trailers through the page would be very effective, as advertising through Facebook gives people the option to share with friends easily, creating further buzz for the film. Viral advertisements could include a series of video's posted on YouTube or through the official film website. In thrillers, these could very easily present an enigma and get their audience to interact and answer the question, but not give them the answer so they feel even further enticed to see the film.

A recent film to be virally advertised is the upcoming Limitless. A video posted on YouTube showed a man hacking into the large screens in Times Square. The advertising here is that the film trailer he had taken over from was Limitless, so effectively every viewer to watch this video is also watching a trailer for the Limitless film. An advertisement had also been set up in public transport showing the star of the film Bradley Cooper advertising a pill to "unlock your potential", which is the main basis of the Limitless film.

We have many possible ways to market our thriller film and will design a series of posters and will hope to be able to edit from out footage a trailer for the film.

By Thomas Beal

Shooting Schedule

Scheduling when to shoot was quite hard as there is only a few camera's able for use. After 2 hours of planning our plot, we came to decide a day on which we plan to shoot on. We decided to shoot on Saturday 19th March as the weather looks like it’s going to be a nice day, which means it’s perfect for shooting.

We planned to meet at The Two Brewers Pub at 11am. From there, it’s roughly all over Ongar all day filming. There is a Sainsbury’s close by so if we need food and drink, we can get it there. We want to try and record for as long as possible so, if we film to 5-6 o'clock that should give us enough time.

If our shooting goes well, I'll bring the film with me to edit at home. If I find that there are some mistakes, we will arrange for another re-shoot day hopefully the week after.

By Charlie Head

Music Ideas

Freeplay Music

http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?t=f&i=69

The Haunting
                Tense, builds up tension also, stings throughout. Could be used for chase scenes, but becomes noise and messy and would not be suitable for an isolated setting.

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http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=11&i=48&t=f

Blood Deep
                Tense, building suspense but does not climax, gives a disorientated feel to the character and could be used in the waking up scene or during flashbacks. Not fast paced enough to be used for chase scenes.

No Reflections
                Gives an eerie feel, stings throughout alerting audience and heightening suspense and tension, gives an aggressive feel also, and could be used with flashback scenes.

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http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=21&i=48&t=f

Gloomy Room
                Eerie feel with a high pitched note throughout, building suspense and tension and also giving a fright to the audience with stings. Could be used to highlight a knife or key scene like a flashback.

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http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=41&i=48&t=f

Difficult To Breathe
                Starts with a fair equilibrium and builds up suspense gradually with an built up with music stings, undertone, feels isolated and could be used at the start of the scene when the protagonist goes from the town to the field.

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By Thomas Beal

Actual Locations

Photos of Actual Locations

 Derelict Barn 

The reason i thought it would be a good idea  to use a derelict barn as a location is because it is a very original location and something that is not easy to come by. It will be very suited to a thriller becuause it is a dark scary place with a solitary atmosphere.

Empty Moat/ Forest

The reason we decided upon using an empty moat as a location is because it is also a very original location with many different aspects to it. It is also very suited to a thriller because it is a dark quiet place with alot of coverings that make it a very eery place.  

Derelict Swimming Pool

A derelict swimming pool is also another very original location. It is somewhere that is always known as a very active place, so when it is empty it is a very eery place. It is full of dirt and graffiti and has broken walls in some places so it makes it very scary and make it a very good location for the thriller.

Swamp

A swamp is not a very original location, however it is a very good place to film a thriller. I think it will be a very good place to film a thriller because it is very well known as a place of danger. It is very overgrown and has alot of sticky mud in and around it, therefore if anyone was to fall in it would be very dangerous. Therefore it is a good place to film a thriller because of this.

Desolate Fields

A desolate field is also not a very orginal location, however we feel that it would be a very good location to use a long shot on. If someone is filmed walking or running through an empty field then it creates a feeling of loneliness and this is something that is scary in many thrillers the thought of someone being alone as it creates a feeling of isolation.  

By George Hick