Audience Feedback

We gave out 3 questions on an answering sheet to an audience we had invited to watch our Thriller Sequence, these are the questions and the answers given..


What is the basic plot of the thriller?

Answers wanted by man.

Torture in the middle east, war.

A man kidnapped due opposition soldier + tries to get information from him.

A special operation is going on and one of the solders is taken hostage.

Army man captured and interrogated and won’t give information and sois being tortured by waterboarding, a man comes in and retrieves him.

Torturing someone for info by the end he gets rescued.

A soldier has entered a territory of another country and gets discovered.

Terrorist captures soldier, which gets rescued at the end.

Soldier being kept in captivity.

Army man captured by the otherside

A soldier being tortured

Hostage has been captured by army man

Torture of a spy by Russians

About War

What do you think the keys strength are in this thriller and why?

Shot types, Russian accent, Editing, Mis-En-Scene, Title.

The storyline is good, good set up.

Did the drowning him bit really well.

Good acting; Waterboarding idea.

Very amazing set and lighting, torture realistic

End title looked great, good idea of the foreign place.

The added sounds had good effect on audience, good suspense

Good choice of the shots used and good lighting.

Good special effects.

Sounds of the water

Good Set

The camera angles and the title credits are really cool – good work!

Camera angles, titles, synchronous sounds

The set, the lighting is good, camera shots work well, the titles are awesome

Gun fight scene

How do you think this thriller could be made even more effective and why?

Lighting.

Could have the titles come in quicker at the end.

The lighting, the people are hard to see.

Make shooting fx more realistic in general.

The charge to the electric bit is confusing and to soon.

The end spoils it by concluding the film to briefly.

More ambient background music sounds a bit empty for opening sequence.

They dialogued too much

More shots, abit too long

Bit slow at the beginning

Dialogue is not really clear at all times

Too much dialogue
-
I found that the plot went well through as we wanted it to come across, and the audience had a lot of positive response in a variety of different things that they thought were the key strength which is very good. With question 3 i do agree with some of the critic but i don't think there is too much dialogue because there has to be something to build up to the water boarding so it doesn't just come directly and gives it all away. I agree that the lighting seems a bit dim but that helps set the atmosphere, and we tried to do it as realistic as possible therefore the scene was only lit by 3 lights.

Evaluation task 7 / Looking back at you preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

We filmed our pre-lim task in the edit suite, we had to find a space were the background wasn’t too confusing, and there wasn’t to much noise that the camera would pick up on, and since we didn’t have a gun-mice or anything like that the camera would pick up on all sound.

To prepare for the pre-lim we were given a storyboard with different shots which we had to follow, to give us something steady that we could rely on. In the different shots there were to people with speech bubbles, we were aloud to mix up the shots so we could first do over the shoulder shot and then another one from the other side if we wanted to. 

Then we had to set up the camera, where we had to balance the white balance, and make sure the right focus was on. Since the pre-lim was in a small space with basic shots it made it easier to move the camera around and give yourself good time. Also while filming you have to make sure that there are enough shots to edit so you can make it all hang together, for example we had someone walking through a door, so first we filmed behind him with hand held camera, the half shot from the front and a close up on the door closing so we kept the continuity throughout the whole video. In the editing process, I didn’t find it that hard because we had a lot of help from the storyboard we were given and the little plan we had done for shots before we started filming. We learnt the basics as choosing a video file and cutting some of that out and putting it down on the bottom line. We were taught how to trim off the edges of clips wants they already had been cut once.

The main task to create a thriller was much more difficult, first we had to brainstorm our own original idea, then put in a group and choose one. The next step we had to take was research our opportunities, for cast, props and location. We found it quite hard to find a space that could look like the idea we had of our location, because it had to resemble a military base/cell, we first had the idea of filming in our teachers garage that looked quite similar but then we found that the space would be quite difficult to film on so we decided to create our own location in the studio. This was quite risky because we had no idea what it was going to look like, before we had set it up. 

Then we had to do our entire storyboard which I found quite difficult because you have to know exactly what shots you want, and which ones you want to come before and after. We also had to write a time of seconds that we thought the shot would take, and give a small description of what we though would happen in the scene. This was very hard also despite the fact that we had no idea what our set up would look like so we figured that we would make one, but maybe not stick with it 100 procent. Our filming was also very different from the pre-lim task because we had to adjust the light constantly because our set was very dark, then we had to have some in-action shots where the camera work had to be very fast, also because we had to make the shots fit together, so we have one shot that is shaken we have to mix it with another shot that is shaken and you have to think about those things in the moment, because it is to late when you are sitting in the editing room and is missing shots. We also ended up filming much more different than we had actually planned in our story board, but what we did was take our story board and take an iphone to start with, the when everything had been up we took pictures as a through line of the story so we had those pictures to follow.

The editing process for our thriller was much more difficult because it was a much larger project and we had many more clips, to choose from, than we had in the prelim. Therefore we learnt how we could give the clips different colours after which ones were good, bad, and the best which helped a lot in the area of knowing what to use and what not to. We could also rename the files as “Adams Reaction” so this also helped us when we had to return to different clips to cut more from them. We started out by making a rough cut, so we had the basic rough cut clips we needed in one place. Then we started deciding which shots had to go first, but we found that making some of the shots fit in with the other ones were quite difficult so we had to find some in-between shots we had taken to put in-between. Our sound was also different to our pre-lim in our prelim we only had diegetic sound of the characters and objects but in our thriller we had that as well but we also had a subtle “cave and wind” sound to make the atmosphere more realistic, as it would sound like in real life. In our thriller we also created special effects, so that there was actual gunfire from the guns, and so that when there is an attack towards the end there is the non diegetic sound of bombs and the special effect lights as well which were created on the program Adobe After Effects. And both the thriller and prelim was edited on Final Cut Pro and filmed with Sony nx5.

Evaluation task 6 / What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation task 5 / How did you attract/address your audience?

Our audiences mainly males from 16 and up to approximately 25. We tried to attract our audience by putting in features that mainly would appeal to them, for example we have a violent water boarding torture scene in a dark uncomfortable room, in this scene there is represented to males as well from to different cultural backgrounds which can relate to the different males in the audience, therefore both sides of the audience is interested in watching this product.

 I also think that the story line in itself will attract a lot of our target audience to come and see it, also because it is a very typical ‘guy’ movie, where guys can go to the cinema together because they want to watch the new movie with all of the bombs, action scenes and violence which is what most men from the age of 16+ tend to like to watch. Therefore when you wanted to market the film to the audience, the trailer should include those key elements that attract the audience so they get a feel for what the movie is about. Since there is represented an element of men from the military that will also appeal to all the young or old men that are or have been in the military and will also appeal to the men or boys that will like to join the military later in their lives. That it reminds them of other great thriller as the expendables, the hurt locker or die another day. 

Task 3 and 4 / What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? and who would be the audience for your media product?

Our thriller could fall under the category of a war film. And has potential to fall under both high concept big budget war film or a low concept character driven plot line. We did some research on both areas, and came to find a few other films that could relate to ours. Since our movie has minor explosions and an interrogation scene of high concept films we found it could relate to The Expendables, The Hurtlocker or Rendition. Made by the companies Colombia pictures, New line cinema and Millennium Films.

But it was probable that our film was going to be distributed by a independent British film company such as Studio Canal or vertigo. It would be production funded by film 4 or BBC films. Our target audience would be 16-24 males, which appeals to both educated and uneducated people, for example there are a lot of men that go to the military to own money to go to college so therefore they would also be interested in watching a film like this because it is action packed and has a complex storyline, with political and cultural references. It is not just restricted to a British audience but can appeal to a wider and international audiences, thanks to the cultural references which people are aware of internationally.

The production would involve working with a limited budget that would mean finding new talent and would not be able to get A-list actors. We would want to film on location to make it more realistic, however that does not mean going to Iraq but to find a location that is similar like Morocco, because you still have to work with a small budget. Our film was not shot there as it was too expensive, therefore of it was made in a studio. We are going to go to film festivals to show our movie to cause awareness and because we are with Studio Canal or Vertigo they are big enough to show us in the cinema.

Evaluation task 2 / How does your product represent particular social groups?

 In the “3” minutes my thriller lasts, there is represented to different social groups. The one is the two white skinhead males and the other is the man that has a foreign accent and is represented as a terrorist. All of these men are dressed in military costume and this represents the group of men who are in the military. The other representation is of the foreigner which is the ‘bad guy’ which is very stereotypical for a movie like this, but he represents the idea of terrorists, who have conflicts with the white men and other men in general because of different cultures and religious beliefs. But these two different group are most likely to attract the same audience as they represent. Therefore you will get a mixture of people in the audience but all along the lines of mostly males. 

-

Evaluation task 1 / In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Behind The Scenes of Our Thriller

Filmed and Edited by me, to show how are set was made and how the shoot day went.