Products Before Break

We are leaving our products for a time while we concentrate on other aspects of the course. We discovered last year that building a break into our schedule was beneficial as we were able to reflect on the work we had done to that point but also have new energy and enthusiasm when we returned to the coursework. When you have been working hard on something for a while, you can lose track of what it actually looks like, and we need to see it from a different perspective. This is our review of our products to date:

POSTER

This is the product we most need a break from. We are pleased with a great deal of it but are struggling to find a final layout that we are satisfied with. We are happy with the main image as we think it is simple but strong. We think it will pose a lot of questions for the audience that they will want to watch the film to have answered. Our main issues are:

1. Is all the text in the best places?
2. Have we got the right colour palette? What about the pale yellow?
3. Does coming soon need to be bigger?
4. Is there too mcuh empty space on the left?

MAGAZINE COVER

This is probably progressing more smoothly at the moment although it is further from being finished. However, we are much clearer about what needs to be done and how we might do it:

1. Sleepless teaser text - needs more 'selling' language
2. Smaller images - film titles need to stand out more
3. Teaser text on right needs to be cut down - too 'wordy'
4. Colour palette and font of text needs work
5. Pleased with balance of text and image
6. Pleased with new photo choice
7. Masthead - colour needs adjusting?
8. Background is ok but could it be more relevant to film?

TRAILER

Again, although this still needs work, we are aware of what we need to do:

1. Priority is sound mix
2. Also needs formal elements - ident, coming soon, end credits etc
3. Revoicing of two dialogue moments - caretaker and Rebekah
4. Ending still needs to be sharpened up

Progress with Poster

 

We have been battling with the layout of the text for this poster. It has been difficult to find a composition that totally satisfies us. We have swapped all the key elements around several times without finding a composition that seems quite right. However, we are pleased with the tagline which we think really summarises our film's theme well and also acts as anchorage for the poster image. We also think the Mail review is in keeping with the style of this kind of soundbite, including the pun on the title.

Progress with Mag Cover

MAGAZINE COVER

We discussed taking new shots using the Mac screen for lighting and a closer shot distance in a previous post. Here we are trying to find a clour scheme for the magazine cover which reflects the poster colour palette, where blue is the key colour with red as shocking accent.

We created this blue-ish background on Photoshop as it has both a slightly watery and a dream feel about it but it may well be too dark.

We are choosing between these shots. Again, we are looking for a dream-like feel and we think the contrast between the shadowed face and the lighter side works well. Gabi's left eye is really emphasised here and she looks startled. When an extreme close up is used, we have seen that teh masthead goes in front of the image rather than the more usual behind. However, the overall look is too dark. We are avoiding red, the conventional colour of film magazine mastheads, as we need to use this for our title. We will have to think again about the colour choice here.

We are also not entirely sure this is the right shot to choose. We liked the idea of the shadows to add an eerie feel, but maybe it is too much.

Creating Effect for Dream Sequence

One key decision has been how to ensure the audience are able to clearly distinguish the dream sequence, as there is frequent cross-cutting between this and reality. We needed to create a distinctive look for the dream sequence so that it is easily recognisable. We have done this in a number of ways. Initially, we reduced the speed of the shots slightly to around 87%. This is not slow enough to really feel like slow motion and at times isn't even that noticeable, but it does add a more dream-like feel.

Secondly, the screen shots below showed an effect we created. We copied each dream clip and layered the duplicate on top of the original. We then added two effects to the original - a gaussian blur, which we kept relatively minimal but is still discernible, and a sepia colour overlay to give a sense of the past. Both of these are strong effects which create a look that is too strong. We therefore reduced the opacity of our duplicate clip to allow a reduced amount of each effect to show through and then linked the clips together. We believe this has created a distinctive and effective look for our sequence, hinting at a sense of unreality and also an impression that this happened in the past,

Mixing Tracks to Create Trailer Music

 

When it came to non-diegetic music, we decided to create a track for the trailer using three different copyright free tracks and a combination of drum loops. We are using most of one track for the start where the shots were longer, but we have had to adjust the speed to make this slower and more sinister and also add a very slight echo. 

We are using a combination of faster-paced tracks for most of the second half as the shots themselves are cut quick and we wanted to build up speed and tension as it got closer to the end of the trailer. We have also edited sections of drum loops as we want extra drum beats at moments where there is more danger. We are ending on the sound of drum bang as it synchronised well with our final shot of Lucy opening her eyes and left it on a really tense note. To cut between the different tracks we overlapped them and faded one out whilst fading the other one in to make sure the transition between tracks wasn't too harsh. However, we are still not satisfied with this sound mix and have a lot of further work to do. The screen shot above shows how complex the layering of audio tracks can become.

Progress with Poster

We really liked the idea of the main character trapped between the drowning in the past and the danger of the future, and thought it was effective to use the shot of her turning away from the past to face the unseen danger approaching her. However, we had ruled out the idea of using the shot of the drowning scene as it might just give a little bit too much away. We wanted to hint at the drowning though, so we used a photo of Ellie's face (the young version of our main character, Lucy) and used a photo of a puddle to overlay and make transparent so that there is an impression of drwoning without this being made explicit. We like the connection this creates between the older and younger versions of Lucy and we think this is a subtle hint that will be appreciated more when the poster is reviewed in the light of having seen the film. We also think this will make quite a simple and classy poster. You can see that we have extracted the image of Lucy much more accurately and combined the burn and blur tools to blend her with the background. We have also extracted Ellie's face, resized it and added the overlay of the puddle and reduced its transparency to create a ripple of water over her face. Their startled expressions match well.

We were not sure the colour was effective enough so we added a blue colour overlay and reduced the opacity of the Ellie layer to give her an almost ghost-like effect. We feel this works really well and is creating a distinctive colour palette for our product, which is added to by the bright red of the title. This operates like a kind of visual startle, which fits well with our genre. We have also started to add some of the formal elements such as the required billing block.

Second Rough Cut

After our audience feedback, we have produced another rough cut. This has changed from the first rough cut:

Individual clips have been cut right down

• Our shots have been re-ordered to add clarity
• We have tried a number of different ways of creating connections for the audience e.g. matches on dialogue ("You need to see someone" / next shot is in counsellor's room), graphic matches (little girl in dream tilts head to side / cut to mother's head coming into shot tilted on one side as calls upstairs), matches on theme (running / danger shots)
• We have cross-cut more with the dream sequence to make the connection between the older and younger girl clearer.

Photos for Magazine Cover

Here we are experimenting with some photos of the main character for the magazine cover:

These photos were taken of the main character in our piece. They are taken from behind with her looking back at the camera to make it look as though she is running away. This style of shot was the closest we could get to an action shot as when we tried to make her actually run and take the photo, they all came out blurry when put on the photo editing package. They do not look blurred in the camera playback, so it is the resizing of the image causing the problem.

Although we liked this idea and started a rough mock up as seen above, when putting the photos on the editing package and starting to make the magazine cover, we realised the shot felt more like poster photos. We feel that the poster will be able to put this image in some kind of context, whereas the magazine cover won't have the space to give it enough impact or explain the facial expression and pose.

After realising this, we checked through other photos we had taken, some of them were out of focus. The  close ups we had done were not of a good standard and this is why we took  more. We believe that the lighting was the main reason for the photos being out of focus as  we could not find a setting on the camera that could cope with a dark room and bright torchlight at the same time. This is why when we took the new photos, we did not use torches to light up her face. Instead, we used the lighting from a bright coloured wallpaper on the apple mac and put it close to her therefore it reflected off  her face. This resulted in the photos coming out really well and they are the new photos that we are using for the new magazine cover. We feel that the choice of a close up is more impactful for the cover which relies on the one image to get the message across and therefore that image needs to be really striking.

Poster Ideas from Research

We liked the idea of this poster as it represents someone with a lot going on in their head, like our character:

We took two photos from our filming:

We took some rough photos (not of the cast member):

And mocked up a rough poster:

Ultimately we have decided not to go with this idea. Although we love the idea of something going on in the head of the main character, one of the key issues it raises is space. The head area is relatively small to place such a key image, and as it is impactful, we want to see more of it. We are also not so sure this will have an obvious connection with the title.

Here are some of the many photos we took of our actual cast member:

 

As you can see, we have been thinking hard about lighting - we feel the photo will be much more effective with interesting lighting on the face, however it is quite difficult to achieve. We liked the first photo because the shadow on the left side of her face suggests someone coming, which is why she has turned round. We really like the idea of her being trapped between the murder she saw in the past (behind her and faded out to represent the past) and a connected future danger (the shadow coming towards her). This is a line of thought we want to develop.

 

 

 

Although we feel this poster idea has potential, we are not going to continue with this version as a key issue raised is whether this gives too much away. We have limited photos available for the drowning as it was a challenging scene. In our film, we are imagining the drowning being revealed in the dream little by little. This poster might therefore tell the audience too much. Of course, it will be seen in the trailer, but the poster will be released before that. If we had a more partial shot from much closer up, that might work, but we could not spend too long organising photos because we had to consider our cast member, Kelly, who was already doing us a big favour agreeing to lie in a river in winter!



Reaction to Feedback on First Cut

 Switch – re-watching rough cut

-reorder

-add effects for dream sequence

-add voiceover?
-make shots shorter

Comments on audience feedback

-they were unsure whether the girl at the start was Lucy when she was little but I think this will become clearer when we reorder our shots and have a more shaped cut as it’s a bit messy at the moment.
-someone said there were too many suspects, however I think this leaves mystery for the real film. Most of them said the two main suspects were the teacher and the caretaker which I thought was a good thing as there wasn’t one clear suspect.
-they were confused about the person in Lucy’s bedroom as they didn’t know whether this was real or she was imagining it. I also think this is good in a way as it leaves it ambiguous for the audience but a simple effect could show that its her hallucinating from the drugs.

I found it hard to know how to interpret some of this feedback. I appreciate the points raised but some of them reflected deliberate choices rather than mistakes. The main points I will take from this is the need to make the dream sequence distinctive and the need to change the order to help clarity. I also know we need more pace, which was mentioned and acts as good confirmation.

Response to Audience Feedback

On Re-Watching First Cut:
 

Loads of shots that are the same - we have duplicated material

Some of the sound needs to be toned down

Add effects on the shots that are dreams – filters

Make it a lot shorter

Show more about the plot of the film – not enough info

Make dream / reality clear

Comments on audience feedback:
 

They were confused about the person in the bedroom – we are going to put filters on all the shots that are dreams so that this is obvious they are dreams and not real.

They said there was not enough info – by having a more shaped cut, it will help us distinguish the plot of the story clearer for the audience.

They said they could not tell who it was and the suspects – I was pleased with this as we want people to be unsure on who did the crime and to lead people on to the wrong suspect.  

Filmed Audience Feedback

Here we see a Year 12 class watching our rough cut. The dialogue tells us where we are in the cut and we can see their reactions. Afterwards we watched some discussion of the piece so far, focusing on understanding of the story. Last year, we took a similar approach to getting audience feedback and felt that it worked well. Not being there gave the Year 12s freedom to be critical without feeling rude. We were also able to tell our teacher what we wanted to know and let her guide the discussion. In some ways, this manipulates the feedback; but at the same time, we are aware that not all feedback is useful. For example, our teacher was able to move discussion on when it was getting to areas that weren't useful relevant for us. We did find out a lot from this, mainly that while some people seemed to understand the narrative easily, others were more confused. We need to make it clearer so that anyone can understand.

Whole Rough Cut for Feedback

Here we have put our separate cuts together and created a whole trailer to show an audience. We are hoping that they will be able to focus on what we want to know, as we are aware that there are a lot of distracting mistakes in this. We know a lot of these and the value of this initial feedback for us is in establishing what the audience can understand about plot and character. This is our key concern right now.

Initial Edit

To begin the editing process, we divided the storybaord between us and each put together a very rough cut of our separate sections:

Oliver's Section

Katherine's Section

 

 

We have used some of the same shots here and need to work out exactly where each belongs. We also know the trailer lacks pace and some coherence. However, we are pleased with what we have achieved so far as our main purpose was to select the shots we wanted to use from all of our filming. We have had to choose from various takes and angles and then trim these shots down even further. This was time-consuming, so we feel that from the work we have done so far, we can finally begin to work on a proper cut of the trailer.

Photos from Filming

These are some of the photos we took while filming, showing how we appraoched the task and also showing some of the issues we faced.

We knew lighting would be a problem in the 'bed' scenes. We filmed every shot we wanted with three different lighting states, as we know that playback on the camera and playback on the editing package does not look the same. Therefore we wanted to give ourself options. Here we are using a lamp and have draped it with a scarf to knock the light back a little.

Here we have opened the blids slightly to get the cold, bluey effect of early morning.

Here we are creating Gabi's makeup. We wanted her to look really tired to reflect the title of the film, but at the same time did not want to go over the top with this.

We tried all sorts of differnt camera angles to create different feelings and moods. This one above Gabi was a useful one as it creates a voyeuristic feel.

Here we are filming in the school toilets. We had to be aware of the mirror on the door.

Here we are filming the dream sequence. We cast a Year 7, Ellie, in this role as there is some resemblance between her and Gabi and we know she attends Drama Club and is therefore interested in acting.

This is Mr Woollatt and Kelly preparing for the drowning scene. This was tricky because we wanted to be quick and efficient so Kelly was not in the cold water too long; but these are also the most impactful shots in our trailer so they needed to be right. We also had the logistical problems of making sure Mr Woollatt was not easily identified and did not show much of his face, while we wanted the watch to be prominent and clear in the sequence as it is a key plot point. We rehearsed and walked through other scenes but were reluctant to do this too much for this scene for Kelly's sake. We therefore had to spend a long time setting up the cameras and explaining to the actors exactly where they needed to be before filming.

Here we are filming the caretaker, who had definitely learned his lines!:

These are conversation scenes on the island. We had to film these several times as we knew the dialogue wouldn't be picked up from that shot distance. If necessary, both actors have agreed to revoice their dialogue, which is common film practice.

Target Audience - Katherine

Research into Target Audiences and How to Attract Them

Active Audiences

Active audience theories suggest that the audience is participating in the action of consuming text. They are not messages ‘encoded’ in text for the audience to ‘decode’. Instead, through consuming the text, meaning is encoded in the interaction between the text and the audience. Therefore the meaning belongs to the audience. This is quite important for our kind of psychological thriller, where we depend a lot on the audience doing a lot of the work and making their own interpretations. Many people found Inception confusing, but this added to rather than detracted from its appeal. The beginning of this article suggests that being clear on what happens would actually spoil the fun:

http://collider.com/inception-christopher-nolan-explains/61972/

There is a feeling of pride in being able to understand the film, and even audiences who were confused seem to enjoy the confusion as these comments suggest:

http://uaddit.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=15123

So I would argue that there is a market for complex films where the difference between dream, reality and drugged halluciation is difficult to work out.

Context of Consumption
According to Morley’s Reception Theory, meanings vary with the individual. He interviewed a large audience on the meanings they had got out of watching the same episode of the Nationwide programme and found the influence a text has on a person is affected by the context of production and the audience’s context of consumption, where you are, who are you with and how you are feeling at the time of consumption. Therefore each individual feels differently towards a film because of their tastes, which is why we have target audiences, but also because of how they consume the film. If the individual were to watch a film in a cold, dirty room, on their own and whilst they feel unwell it’s unlikely they will enjoy the film.

For us, this means that when we are trying to identify our audience, we need to think about the context of consumption. Watching a trailer on the internet is a different experience to watching in a crowded cinema. Therefore our promotional campaign needs to take into account where we release our products. As the main trailer  we are making is intended for the cinema, we need it to be loud and dramatic to catch the audience who have come to see a different film and might not be settled or might walk in half way through. Therefore we need dramatic shots and loud, energetic music to catch attention. This is why trailers rely on a combination of dialogue and voiceover and strong visuals - often the same basic information is being given because this way you get your message over to the audience who is half-watching and the audience who is half-listening.

However, we also need to make sure our trailer rewards audiences watching online. This is likely to be a more peaceful experience and they might even watch several times. We therefore need to have a variety of shots so there is always something new to notice.

Target Audience
Fiske argues that target audiences don’t exist. He suggests that audience profiling has become pointless and that demographics are almost irrelevant to audience tastes these days as audiences are now fragmented and diverse. There is too much of a wide range in difference in taste that it can’t be put into big groups. There is too much choice to have big target audiences. If we were to look at taking the traditional demographic approach for our film, we would probably aim for a target audience age ranging from 15 to 35. I think our film does not have a specific gender preference as although the main character is a girl which would appeal to females, the plot of the film could be appealing to males also. We have a lot of action, drama and psychological tension which should appeal to all.

Ang, however, suggests Fiske is too extreme and all media producers try to ‘package’ their audiences to a certain extent. Otherwise selling the film would become extremely difficult as you wouldn’t know around who you are selling it too. However, he does agree that it’s become harder to use the demographic approach- it’s becoming old fashioned. It’s not easier to use the VALs (values, attitudes, lifestyle) approach, where the audience is targeted based on taste rather age and gender. If we were to base our target audience on the VALs approach, we would be targeting individuals that enjoy films with an enigma code (a puzzle they have to solve) as they would be trying to figure out who the murderer in the film is, and drama as the film involves this also. We are also thinking about a wide adult audience who do not want to see too much extreme violence but like to be involved in the film.

This female writer / blogger tries to analyse here why psychological thrillers appeal to her. The poll she conducts suggest they are the most popular sub-genre of the thriller genre:

http://rebeccaberto.com/tag/thriller/

I think a lot of her comments would apply to many fans of the genre and explains its popular appeal and why it does not alienate a female audience.

Audience Activity
Fiske sees the consumer/producer relationship as a conflict. Producers try to determine our tastes by what they provide. Therefore the audience can only select what their taste is from what is provided by producers. Fiske argues that we determine what becomes popular, and we tend to choose products that we can ‘resist’ and create our own meanings from. Therefore he is suggesting we like products where there is not a definite meaning to the story so we can create our own version of what the story means to fit our individual personal needs. This is how we drift into ‘fan’ pursuits such as mash ups, fanfiction etc. Jenkins argues that today’s consumption is active and creative. The audience goes beyond the film itself when consuming and creates a world outside the film they can live through. Our intended promotional campaign has a social networking element which allows audiences to interact. We would also expect the creation of alternative trailers on YouTube etc.

Silverstone suggests that consumption is a mediated experience that can take three forms:
Consumption- this is the ordinary, everyday act of watching a film.
Play- this is an act of participation in a make-believe situation. The audience actively involves themselves- they like to make believe that the world of the text is true.
Performance- here the act of participation becomes real. For example, when the audience participates in creating fanfiction and YouTube remix clips. Silverstone argues that play and performance are becoming more popular that consumption. Therefore the film itself is becoming less important; it’s more about playing with the story and becoming part of it. So, when thinking about target audience for our film we also need to think about where they can take the story and how they can involve themselves. This means that the trailer has to leave big questions, and has to make the audience really engage with the main character so they are tempted to look up her Facebook profile, read more about her on the film website etc.

User Theories

‘User rather than consumer’ theories, however, suggest that we use media rather than consume it. We have a set of ‘pleasures’ that we have identified and we use media texts to gain these pleasures for ourselves.
Blumler and Katz said we watch texts for what we can get out of them. We use them for: information (what we can get out of them), learning (to improve and educate ourselves), personal identity (to work out who you are and what you stand for), integration and social interaction (to discuss texts with other people) and entertainment (for fun/escapism/pleasure).This is what gets us addicted to film, we almost need it to make ourselves feel and become better- to interact with others and escape from our problems.
Furthermore, we need to take these things into consideration when thinking about our target audience and what will attract them. We need to think about which of these pleasures or uses and gratifications will be involved in our film and then target those who enjoy them. For example, the audience should achieve integration and social interaction from our film as they will be able to discuss it with other people. It will also involve entertainment as it allows them to get escape from their personal problems and get engrossed in the film’s story instead. They will also be pleasured voyeuristically as the audience will see something secret like the girl’s drink being spiked, that the girl does not know herself and so is positioned as a spy.

There is a suggestion that these films are exploitative which is touched on in this article:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/millennial-media/201210/what-makes-film-psychological-thriller

This suggests that our film could portray serious mental disturbance in a less than thoughtful way, just for a thrill; and we also don't go deeply into our murderer's feelings / reasons. However, as the writer says, this is common for the genre and is what makes these films enjoyable to watch. As long as our audience do not take the film too seriously it should not do great harm.

Target Audience - Oliver

Research Into Target Audience

The target audience for my trailer is the traditional target audience of 15-35 years old. This covers the key demographic for our film and also hits the most prized media audience demographic as these are the people who are assumed to consume most media as they don’t have big financial responsibilities and have time.

This google search:

Google Search

shows that if you google "who watches psychological thrillers", a common entry is a list of best films - the fact that there are so many of these suggest that they are very popular films. Having looked at some of these lists, the majority of films included are from 2000s suggesting a youngish compiler, so this backs up the idea that these films are popular with a young audience.

My film is non-gender specific as it has an appeal for both genders. Male viewers may enjoy the action and suspense sequences and female viewers may enjoy the psychological drama. There is often a strong female character in these dramas to help this appeal.

This article by a film writer / producer explains his target audience for his own psychological thriller and his target audience. This highlights the importance of the female market and also of the older market, who are maybe more important than people realise.

http://www.johnfurse.co.uk/marketability.html#audience


However, these are big gender generalisations and Ang suggests that this kind of targeting is no longer accurate and a VALs approach is better. This is why he believes that target audiences are based on tastes. This means that according to Ang, the people watching my film should like movies which include drama and a puzzle and you have to keep watching to work out the puzzle. This is the enigma code as identified by the theorist Barthes and this has an interest that is not relevant to gender, age, social class etc, but more to personal tastes.

The theorist Fiske says that target audiences do not exist as everyone is an individual and no one has the exact same view on something. With so much choice now available and so much content for niche audiences, producers are now chasing audiences rather than one mass audience as before. He feels that everyone thinks something different and there is no longer such a thing as target audience as there is such a wide range to choose from. However, I think that there is still some audience profiling that is possible. For example, we think that our film has more appeal to a younger age group because of the age of the characters and therefore the actors involved.

The theorists Blumler and Katz think that the audience is ‘caught’ through gratifications; entertainment, escapism, self-worth and social bonding are key gratifications for our film. Our movie will have entertainment because people will enjoy it and they will find it fun to watch. It will have escapism because it will get you so drawn into the puzzle; you will forget about the outside world and only be focusing on the movie. It will give you a chance for social bonding as you can go to watch the movie with friends. There is also an appeal in films which are challenging and have complex plots, as ours does. On this poll, the majority of responders said they actively enjoyed being confused by a film:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121202070355AAhvQU0

Silverstone is another theorist who talks about the target audience. He says that we watch these days in 3 ways; consumption (watching), play (making believe in the reality) and performance (interacting). My film will have consumption due to its huge promotional campaign. There will be websites set up for it and it will also be on social networking sites which will hit the play element. It will involve play as we are going to make the world of the texts seem real by creating games, and having interviews with the actors pretending to be the characters. It will have performance as I will allow for fan fiction to be posted and people will be making Youtube mash ups of my end product. In this way, our overall campaign allows audiences to consume the film in more than one way.

Potential Poster Design - Oliver

I have gone back to researching film posters to get some design ideas that are specific to our genre. The thing that stands out most is that these posters tend to feature a close up of the main character looking scared /  vulnerable. We will also want to feature some other key narrative moments like the murder scene, the tattoo / watch that gives the murderer away etc, and I have tried to include these in my sketch:

Use of shadow / silhouette in the background - something we can use?

Focus on carefully-lit, vulnerable female face

Unusual composition and a lot of text. This is more the facial expression we should aim for.

Again, a shadowy figure. The red makes a good accent colour. We are thinking of using that for our title.

If we decide to put photos of the suspects on the poster, this could be quite a striking format.

Both of these posters split their space into thirds. The title uses a glowing font, something we haven't considered. This kind of style enables us to convey more narrative.

Very simple but effective. Again, good lighting is key.

We have started talking about the title being a key part of the research as seen in Katherine's posts, and this sketch is trying to use ideas from above while making the title key.