Task 7-Comparing: Our Preliminary Task Vs Our Main task

My preliminary task started off rather difficult because it was my first time operating the camera by myself. However going through the day it got easier and easier because the shots used for that task were rather basic as they were just close up shots and wide shots from different angles.

In our preliminary task we did not have to make a storyboard as we already had one made for us however in our main task we had to draw up our own story board to use. However we ended up changing almost everything on the day of the shoot that we put in our storyboard. We changed props dialogue and set. Whereas in our preliminary task we did everything we were told to do and we followed all instructions and steps on the storyboard.

Comparing My prelim task to my final work I would say my final work was more professional because I had more knowledge of how to use cameras and I was more advanced which made me able to succeed doing the ever so difficult tracking shot with the crane and also I had a sharper eye during the shoot for the thriller because I noticed while playing back the preliminary task that the opening wide shot was a bit blurry meaning that I did not focus well before shooting that scene. However whilst shooting the final thriller I was more aware and made sure everything was clear before I started rolling. In our preliminary task we had no title sequence we just went straight into the scene whereas in our final task we actually took time to shoot a scene for our title sequence and we edited it and added credits and cast eg Flora Slater "Produced by Tobi Abiodun" "Directed by Beth Lane"

 

In our prelim task we took lighting into no account. We just used whatever light the studio produced whereas in our thriller we carefully chose the type of lights we wanted to use in order to create the theme and represent the right mes-en-scene. We also had to make sure the lights were blending and make sure some of the lighting was not too harsh. Just as well for Mes on scene. In our prelim we had no mes on scene we just shot were was most convenient for us so our set in our prelim was adding no effect or emphasis to the sequence whereas in our main task we had to pick the most appropriate place to shoot whether convenient or not and make sure everything was integrated right to give the right mood and theme to the thriller.

Editing when editing our prelim we only had to put 3 to 4 different shots on the timeline and make sense of them there were no worries about integration and these were very basic shots such as close ups medium shots wide shots and low angle shots and there was no other form of sound apart from dialogue. However in a Main task it was much different we had to put in dialogue and music and we were new to adding the music so it was quite difficult to start with because I had to look through several different songs before I got a soundtrack that fit our sequence but it didn't stop there, when we put in the soundtrack we needed to add effects eg fade in. we also had to shadow the volume in some parts so it was not louder than our dialogue and all the other background noises that were meant to be heard eg the projector. And we also had a much difficult shot to work with whilst editing and this was the tracking shot we operated with the crane. We had to make sure the transition from the tracking shot to the next shot was smooth and not too awkward and we had to use effects to do this. But other than that the other shots were almost similar to that of the prelim so it was not as difficult to work with them.

In conclusion I do so for the main task we had to work much harder than we had to work for our Main task because there was much more to do and we learnt how to integrate different shots better to make transitions more smooth and less awkward. Also we learnt how to work with music and dialogue at the same time under sound. From this you can tell that we learnt how to work with cameras better because in our prelim shoot you notice some scenes were the faces are blurry because they were not in focus well enough but then you don't see errors like that in our main task because we were more careful and more aware. And we also had more complex and complicated shots. We also had the drive and motivation to do the main task well because we all wanted our main task to be much better than our prelim so that influenced us to work harder and now we know much more and we are much more experienced with shooting cameras and editing than we were when we shot our preliminary task.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evaluation task 6 - How have I used digital technologies in my product

When making our thriller we used

- Cameras
- Editing software
- Music
- Microphones
- Projectors


And other forms of technology and we integrated them to create different effects and represent different themes in our thriller as explained in the video below

Evaluation task 5 - How have I chosen to attract/address my audience?

 

This is a presentation about how we in my group addressed and attracted our target audience both primary and secondary

how have i matched conventions in my thriller

Whilst shooting we used a crane for our tracking shot what this did was that it created a more cinematic effect by showing our target audience the surrounding of the environment. It shows them what props are used and gets them to have an idea of what was going on that led to the event in the opening clip of the thriller that we recorded. A Tracking shot is a convention that is used in a variety of different noir thrillers for example in the opening of A Touch Of Evil.

 

 

After the tracking shot we used 2 other basic camera shots. They were medium shots however we shot our actress at a low angle looking up at her with the two other shots and what this does is that it gives her a sense of power and makes the audience see her as more dominant. However our actor was shot from a high angle poking down and what this does is makes him look vulnerable towards our audience also it is to represent how weak he is compared to the woman that killed him. It shows that she is more dominant than he is. Low angle and high angle demonstrates power in a scene and this is a convention that we used in our film.

With our lights we tried to keep the scene dark and colourful so we could keep the Neo noir effect. So we did not use any of the ceiling lights in the studio all lights that we used were fluorescent lights. we used white fluorescent lights but we covered most of them with filters to give it a sort of psychedelic and mysterious theme. We used classic noir lighting to create the effect of a boudoir. This has been used in a number of other noir-ish films such as Peeping Tom and Basic Instinct. We match this convention

For sound we had very little dialogue because we wanted the scene to tell the story. So we only gave our killer 2 lines but we made use of all the background noises we recorded. And then we added a soundtrack in the background as our secondary sound. Choosing the music was not easy as we had to choose a soundtrack that supported the sexual theme we wanted to give the thriller so we could get it to sell as what is said to make thrillers sell is sex drugs and violence. So we had different albums to choose from and to make sure we moved faster I offered to go to a different computer and listen to all the songs on the three different albums. I narrowed down about a 100 songs to 10 and showed the 10 I selected to the members of my group. So we listened to them together and we selected track 12 from burlesque and beyond and that was my first choice of the 10. we chose this track because it gave the thriller the cinematic effect we wanted it to have and put emphasis on the sexual theme we were trying to display. Sound is something that gives meaning to a film in an opening sequence and therefore we used this to match that convention.

In our thriller we used a traditional opening sequence. In thrillers you normally expect to see titles and in our thriller we used titles therefore we matched the conventions of having titles in the opening sequence of thrillers. With traditional opening sequences you start off with the directors, producers, editors and the production company before getting to the Title of the actual thriller. This is what we did for our thriller therefore we matched the convention as we did everything in chronological order.

Evaluation task 1- How stereotypes are represented

In theory a stereotypical view of woman that has been accepted by society is that women are weaker than men- so women need men to survive. Another one that has been accepted by society is that women are less dominant than men meaning a woman can not dominate a man. Whilst some stereotypical views of men are that men are always more dominant and men don't get taken advantage of however older men are attracted to younger women and could be more vulnerable towards younger women.

In our thriller these stereotypical views are subverted and at the same time some are conformed. This is because in a situation where there's a woman and a man and out of them one is a murderer if these ideologies were true it would be expected that the killer was the man while the victim was the woman then it would be a typical story of a woman being vulnerable whilst a man took advantage of her slept with her and killed her.

However this did not happen in our thriller. In our thriller we had a younger woman taking advantage of a vulnerable older man tying him up on his bed and murdering him. This subverts the expectations of a typical woman because the woman in our thriller is shown to be dominant she is shot from a low angle looking up whilst our man is shot from a high angle looking down this gives her a sense of power and dominance over the man and it shows that the man is weaker than she is as well as emphasising how vulnerable he was before he got killed whilst women are seen to be less dominant weaker and more vulnerable than males.

However this also a positive representation of men. As older men are believed to be easily fooled and deceived by younger women. In this thriller we have our male of an old age getting manipulated by a younger female. So in this case we conformed to the expectations of a stereotypical lonely older men being extremely vulnerable towards younger women.

Our male actor Bobby was seen as the vulnerable character as he is meant to be seen as a man who cannot really get a woman so he goes for almost anyone and when he thought he finally found someone to settle down with the person ended up killing him and he ended up dead. As our dominant female took one of his belongings and left his dead body on a bed.

 

 

 

 

Evaluation task 4- How have I chosen to attract/address my audience?

Although the audience of "Basic Instinct" was mostly 30-44 year old males however our target audience is between 18 and 29 year old males and this has a relatively large audience especially compared to 18-29 year old females this shows that we would attract our primary secondary audience.

However it also shows that our secondary target audience is going to be larger than our primary target audience. And it also assures us more that we are on the right track for initially targeting a male audience because in two movies that I have researched "The last Seduction" "Basic Instinct" have shown that makes prefer this type of movies as there is a larger male audience in comparison to the female audience attracted.

We are also trying to appeal to the middle and upper class. This is because they will have more disposable income and if they manage to like the movie their likely to give it good publicity towards other upper class and middle class people which will make our movie successful. So they would not mind trying out a movie that does not have pre-sold elements such as well known actors  or a well known director and also a movie that is not high concept and does not have recent/previous movies to bank on. For example The dark knight rises has The dark knight which was successful. That encouraged people to give the dark knight rises as chance.

However we might get mostly working class people because we plan on getting our movie distributed by a UK company which does not have the best record for distributing good successful movies apart from Streetdance 3D and Monsters. So it is likely that it will be cheap to buy or watch the movie at cinema and working class people are seen to like buying low priced things. So we might just end up getting majority of our viewers from the working class.

Votes	Average
Males	73091	6.9
Females	13170	6.7
Aged under 18	197	7.5
Males under 18	136	7.7
Females under 18	61	7.1
Aged 18-29	32208	7.0
Males Aged 18-29	26719	7.0
Females Aged 18-29	5489	6.9
Aged 30-44	41518	6.8
Males Aged 30-44	36360	6.9
Females Aged 30-44	5158	6.6
Aged 45+	10307	6.9
Males Aged 45+	8788	7.0
Females Aged 45+	1519	6.7
IMDb staff	11	6.7
Top 1000 voters	757	6.9
US users	19687	6.8
Non-US users	66574	6.9
IMDb users	104499	6.9

Evaluation task 4- How have I chosen to attract/address my audience?

Males	8095	7.1
Females	1378	7.2
Aged under 18	5	5.7
Males under 18	3	5.3
Females under 18	2	8.0
Aged 18-29	1882	7.0
Males Aged 18-29	1590	7.1
Females Aged 18-29	292	7.0
Aged 30-44	4710	7.1
Males Aged 30-44	4121	7.1
Females Aged 30-44	589	7.2
Aged 45+	2617	7.3
Males Aged 45+	2271	7.3
Females Aged 45+	346	7.4
IMDb staff	5	8.7
Top 1000 voters	466	7.0
US users	3581	7.2
Non-US users	5892	7.1
IMDb users	12640	7.2

This is the breakdown of the audience from the thriller "The last seduction" Our thriller is much similar to this one and it has the same idea behind it. From this information we can deduce that This movie mostly attracted males and also it attracted males between the age range of 30-44.

We are  hoping to attract a large target audience like this although our target audience is of a different age range we are hoping that we can attract a wider audience of this age. Our Target audience is younger because our version is more modern compared to "The last Seduction". However it shows that we are on the right path because from this information we can see that we are aiming to attract the same gender of target audience this is because this is the type of movie that males like watching.

Although the audience of "Basic Instinct" was mostly 30-44 year old males however our target audience is between 18 and 29 year old males and this has a relatively large audience especially compared to 18-29 year old females this shows that we would attract our primary secondary audience.

However it also shows that our secondary target audience is going to be larger than our primary target audience. And it also assures us more that we are on the right track for initially targeting a male audience because in two movies that I have researched "The last Seduction" "Basic Instinct" have shown that makes prefer this type of movies as there is a larger male audience in comparison to the female audience attracted.

We are also trying to appeal to the middle and upper class. This is because they will have more disposable income and if they manage to like the movie their likely to give it good publicity towards other upper class and middle class people which will make our movie successful. So they would not mind trying out a movie that does not have pre-sold elements such as well known actors  or a well known director and also a movie that is not high concept and does not have recent/previous movies to bank on. For example The dark knight rises has The dark knight which was successful. That encouraged people to give the dark knight rises as chance.

However we might get mostly working class people because we plan on getting our movie distributed by a UK company which does not have the best record for distributing good successful movies apart from Streetdance 3D and Monsters. So it is likely that it will be cheap to buy or watch the movie at cinema and working class people are seen to like buying low priced things. So we might just end up getting majority of our viewers from the working class.

Votes	Average
Males	73091	6.9
Females	13170	6.7
Aged under 18	197	7.5
Males under 18	136	7.7
Females under 18	61	7.1
Aged 18-29	32208	7.0
Males Aged 18-29	26719	7.0
Females Aged 18-29	5489	6.9
Aged 30-44	41518	6.8
Males Aged 30-44	36360	6.9
Females Aged 30-44	5158	6.6
Aged 45+	10307	6.9
Males Aged 45+	8788	7.0
Females Aged 45+	1519	6.7
IMDb staff	11	6.7
Top 1000 voters	757	6.9
US users	19687	6.8
Non-US users	66574	6.9
IMDb users	104499	6.9