Final product

Below is our final product which we are extremely happy with it and hope you enjoy it. There are of course things we would change and do a little better but we will go into that more in our evaluation blogs



By Michael Holttum, Harvey Young and Anthony Wilson

Audience Feedback

In all, after showing people that we believed to be our targeted audience (15-20) we felt the feedback we received was extremely positive, we were praised on not only our use of camera angles and many different shot types, but the way in which the music matched them, and how well everything fit to make a fantastic opening to a thriller film.

We all were fairly worried about the bold move of turning the opening into a chase scene, but thankfully the audience were fascinated by this, and were extremely entertained by the chase, as usually they can be seen as fairly tacky and in some ways quite humorous, we went for the more brutal approach, and made sure the scene was as close to a thriller as we can possibly get it. Our targeted audience also liked the setting of our film, the windmill helped give off enigmas and a creepy setting at that, to help the thriller become more and more entertaining for our targeted audience. Along with the setting, the masks were also well praised as the audience believed that it helped give that deranged feeling to the film, that as a group was what we wanted to put across to the audience, a more shocking feel to everything.

Along with the brilliant feedback we received, we also requested for some negative feedback, and we were told that in some places the dialogue was somewhat hard to hear, we took this on board as opposed to shaking it off, as we felt we could keep this in mind if we create another film. In all as that was the only piece of negative feedback we recieved we felt we did extremely well as a group, working together as a team throughout, to help ensure that our thriller film is as good as it could possibly be.

By Anthony Wilson

Evaluation Activity 7

Bellow is Our commentary on our preliminary task.


By Harvey Young and Anthony Wilson

Evaluation Activity 6

Bellow is a video of me and Michael discussing everything that our group used to create our thriller as well as support our blog.

By Harvey Young and Michael Holttum, post notes made my Jade Smith

Evaluation Activity 5

By Anthony Wilson

Evaluation Activity 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our potential audience is those who are within the age range of the rating of our film, which is 15 so within the age range of 15-20 is the audience we're looking towards to view our media product, Deceit.

Name: Stacey Phillips
Age: 19

She is interested in the more physoclogical side of thrillers and television shows, enjoying films like Saw and Se7en which could be considered as sub-genres making phycological thrillers, which in some ways is very simular to our film itself, as it makes the reader think what could happen next. She is a student with a part time job so has the social grades of "lowest level of substance" and so could perhaps relate to some of the characters within our film Deciet, this in-turn could also intrest some of her friends to come and see the film, as well has herself. Stacey is into the music in the charts and very much enjoys keeping up to date with her music so she can socialise with friends about it. Stacey shops at the usual shops a teenage girl would go to like Topshop and Primark.

However, we believe that our film would be enjoyed more by males, due to its brutal nature, so we decided to research a boy as well as a girl to get a clear picture of who our audience will be for the film Deceit.

Name: James Smith

Age: 17

James similar to Stacey is also a student with a part time job so has the social grades of "lowest level of substance", so once more we hope he may have some relation to the characters in this way, and not just gender. James often enjoys going out with his friends to the cinema to watch his films, as he feels they have a much greater effect on him, but will buy the occasional film he is interesting in, in his case, thrillers, as these are his favourite genre of film. James enjoys the more brutal side to thrillers, with a lot of violence and action that will keep him on the edge of his seat throughout. He enjoys music of a more rock/grunge nature with bands such as Led Zeppelin and Pearl Jam being his favourite. James likes to shop at shops like Topman, similar to most boys in his age range, but he also likes wearing shirts with his favorite bands on.

The main reason I have chosen these two people is because of the simple fact that they are both in the targeted age range of our audience, 15-20 and also due to their differences in genre we could help establish who is more likely to both see and enjoy our thriller film Deceit.

By Anthony Wilson

Evaluation Activity 3

Below is a commentary that me and Anthony made for our final product:


By Harvey Young and Anthony Wilson

Evaluation Activity 2

Bellow is a picture of Jack Windsor, the actor that played the role of the pig. The pig was an extremly important character in our thriller because he represents the crazy and wreck-less member that every famous gang posses.

Below are a few examples of wreck less and crazy gang members that inspired the pig.

Above is Joe Pesci who plays Tommy DeVito in the film "Goodfellas". Tommy is crazy and spontaneous which is what we wanted the pig to be like. Tommy is more of a mad dog rather than an intelligent member of the gang. The uncertainty of what Tommy will do next contributes greatly to the impact that the film has on the audience.

Above is James Remar who played Ajax in the film "The Warriors". Ajax is more of a rogue member of the gang and can even be seen as more of a hated icon rather than admired. An example of a moment where Ajax could be seen in bad light is when the gang are running to catch a train and Ajax stops because he sees a women that he plans to rape. Obviously this shows him as a bad man but also shows how he is in his own world and doesn't really care about anyone else including his fellow gang members. This idea of anarchy within the gang is exactly what we wanted to incorporate into our own thriller with the pig.

By Harvey Young

Evaluation Activity 1

Title of our film: One of the main issues we had with our thriller was giving it a title, we all came up with different titles we felt could fit our film. At first the title Faces of Nightmares was a title we all agreed was perfect for the film, as the deranged masks would in fact be the whole reference to the title. However, we then felt the original title was a bit self explanatory and also was a lot longer than we wanted, so Harvey Young came up with Deceit which we all felt left many enigmas for the audience as it could in fact have a hidden meaning behind it, this combined with the fact its short and simple, which we felt was effective

Setting/Location: The opening few minutes of our thriller is really based around the location of our film. We chose the mountnessing windmill to first of all create an enigma for the audience to help establish the genre of our film, and also, the fact that the character is being chased towards the windmill suggests that the chaser could perhaps be related to the windmill, as it is in shot often throughout the scene. In order to establish the windmill we first had to come up with a shot that would grip the audience. After many different tries of different shots the one we liked best was a low angle which was slightly tilted, not only did this appear to be an extremely effective shot, it also helped establish the personalities of the villains, that they are perhaps slightly off and maybe even deranged.

Costume and Props: In order to keep the typical conventions of a thriller we felt it was justified to use props that would fit the category, in this case weapons like knives and even baseball bats. We felt the use of the baseball bats would help give off our own approach to the thriller genre, in an attempt to make our film a lot more different than others. In terms of costume, we took an extremely bold move by using the farmyard animals masks as initially we wanted to go for plain white masks as all of us thought they would be extremely creepy and in some ways more shocking than just a persons face, and it also kept a hidden identity for the villains in the film, to both create enigmas and also create some twists in our film. Bearing all this in mind we came up with the idea of farmyard animal masks just simply browsing websites, we felt they were extremely creepy, and once more, created many enigmas, and the bold move really paid off we felt.

Camera work and Editing: Throughout the film we were always thinking of different ways to test ourselves on camera work, as we felt this would make the film so much more interesting for the audience, for one shot we wanted to show the villains over the victim as though they have the power, we decided to do it from a point of view of the victim at a low angle to show their dominant power over him, also with the shakiness of the camera and the heavy breathing helped give off the fear and emotional trauma the victim is going through.

Title and Font style: Choosing a font style for our film was fairly tricky, the main aim we had was to make our film very unique, so in trying to find a unique font style we had to test the majority and see if it fit nicely. When we finally found a font which was both mysterious, fairly unique and that we all agreed would fit, the task of deciding how the credits will appear on screen began. After watching many different films of the thriller category like Taxi Driver we found the more effective way to make the credits appear was during the film itself, as the words can sometimes relate to the images being shown on screen, and this is exactly what we wanted to achieve. In order to make sure the attention isn't taken away from the film itself we chose and extremely neutral colour of white, which can be scene, but not enough to take the focus away from what really matters.

Story and how the opening sets it up: One of the main things as a group we wanted to create was unity between the three villains, in order to create this we used numerous three shots and two shots throughout the film to create some kind of link between them as this can help make it more intimidating for the victim and in turn, the audience itself. We also wanted to establish the power of them by using different camera angles like low angle shots, to emphasies that they are all in control.

Genre and how the opening suggests this: The genre of a film is a thriller, and what we really wanted to achieve is to thrill people, so we took the bold move of making the opening of our film extremely fast pace with a chase scene, this supported by the fast paced music ensures that our audience will be gripped in from the start. Another thing that could suggest the genre is our use of costume and props that are typical conventions of a thriller with the baseball bats and the unique masks it helps make our thriller stand out.

How characters are introduced: There are many different ways we introduced our characters in our film, and all this really depended on who the characters were, for instance when we first see the victim in detail it somewhat breaks up all the slower long shots as it is an intense close up shakey camera, with extremely heavy breathing, this is a fairly memorable shot as apose to the ones before it. Another way we introduced a character was with "The Pig", we felt as he was in control of the situation at one point, we would use a steady camera to show he has no fear at all and is not only in control of the situation, but also the shot, as the close up is used on the masks features.

By Anthony Wilson

Our target audience

Our media product is aimed for people aged 15-19. These people have particular tastes, for example they would enjoy films such as Strangers, they might like TV programmes such as Spooks.

Our target audience would choose to watch our film because their interest for a thrilling storyline whilst at the same time slightly graphic but not too graphic to disgust or offend.

The target audience our thriller is aimed at would have different music tastes and shop in different places in comparison to a target audience of a romantic comedy. Our target audiences taste in music would be diverted away from the mainstream popular culture, this is the same for the types of clothes they wear.

This target audience should watch our film because it is not predictable and is clever with a few enigmas, a clear one in the opening where the masks are in the boot of the detectives’ car. Our film does not follow popular cultures or social trends, something which the type of people our thriller is aimed at are interested in seeing in a film.

By Michael Holttum

Demographics

The dominant ideology of our thriller is white middle class and able bodied, although Ant is being harmed in our thriller, the dominant ideology remains the same.

Demographics are the study of population, and variations in it. Demographics have to be considered when creating a film as for example it would be a waste of money spending a huge budget on a film which only demographically only appeals to a minority part of the population.

For our thriller we have to consider psychographics. Psychographic variables are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitude, interest or lifestyles. We have decided on this that our target audience is white middle class age 16-25, mainly males.

By Michael Holttum

Other ways we promoted our Film

As a group we all decided that we should promote our film in many different ways. We did this because we wanted our film to reach the biggest possible audience.

One way we promoted our website was by designing a website. The internet is such a great tool for promoting and therefore we all thought making a website was a good idea. Jack created the website using a program called Dreamweaver that had various links going to other pages. Obviously the website wasn't actually avaliable from the Internet but looked like a realistic website. Below is the picture of the front page of our website. We used a similar colour scheme as the poster as we felt red and black were very effective and made the title stand out.



Jack Windsor

Problems we encountered during our project

Through our project, we came across problems. To resolve these problems, most of the time we took the best options to solve them, however sometimes problems kept coming back and got on all of our nerves therefore lowering the teams morale.

Problems we encounted included:

- Kids football practice at the windmill
- A splodge on the camera lense
- Camera running out of battery
- Didn't talk loud enough so the camera didn't pick up the sound

Michael Holttum

Deceit: Script

Cast:
The Sheep – Michael Holttum
The Bull – Harvey Young
The Pig – Jack Windsor
The Victim – Anthony Wilson
The Detective – Michael Holttum

Script:
Detective : Tell me everything.
Detective : How did they catch you?
Pig : (Screams)
Victim : (coughs)
Detective : Do you have any idea as to why they would do this to you?
Victim : I have no idea.
Detective : are you sure?
Bull : You tell daddy, to give us the fucking money. (shouts)
Victim : (nods) .
Detective : If you need anything, Get in touch.
End Of opening

By Harvey Young

Final Poster

Below is our final poster design. We all decided on the photo we were going to use and Jack designed the poster. We came across one problem when designing the poster and that was the website we were using to design the poster only had the choice of including US movie ratings. Because of this we have to find and add the correct rating.

Below is another take on the poster. As a group we all decided we didn't like this one as much as it was to basic and the blood on the poster may scare or put off potential viewers.

By Jack Windsor and Harvey Young