Research into Casino Royale

Final Cut - Grip (Unfinished)

Question 6: what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When it came to researching and planning for our thriller, it was all done on the internet. with the internet being so vast with everything and everyone we were able to find films, things about them, how they were made and just being able to find anything. IMDB was a great place to start as it has millions of films from all genres at our fingertips, with all these films we were able to watch films we liked and get alot of ideas and thoughts going for when we came to do ours. IMDB is also really easy to use and understand as for example, it has films that are related to the one you are currently looking at, so its not hard to find things you. YouTube was also a big part of the research as we were able to see people short films, reviews about bigger films and even trailers and how they present the film to get more to watch. the idea that anyone could make a film and put it on YouTube so simply is great as your able to share your creations and get feedback, its also a great way to get involved with some experience on film making. Furthermore, Blogger was a great way to get information we needed simply with the fact that you share everything on a blog, meaning that you can share ideas, opinions and feedback. Also, as all the coursework we have been doing over the year has been open, with have been able to take feedback from teachers and people enabling us to improve if need be, which is great as it helps us learn and develop our skills.

When it came down to the editing, i had never used Adobe Premier Pro before so i had a lot to learn for when i had to edit. the first time i tried it was the edit of the preliminary task and in my opinion it came out alright. although the edit wasn't as extreme as the thriller edit, i still feel it went smooth. one part i felt went well wasn't getting the timing of cuts right so it looks like the shame shot still with a smooth transition to a different angle. i didn't really find an easy way to do this apart from having the the second shots first frame on the preview screen, then flicking through the frames of the first shot and finding a way  that makes it look smooth to cut. Another thing i learnt was using multiple layers of audio to get the right sounds, for on one layer using diegetic sounds such as cars and birds. Also adding in layers with maybe breathing we Edward runs etc. Furthermore, the use of titles and the brightness/contrast settings were alot of work, but was very interesting to do as it was all based on experimenting with all the option available to get things right. getting the colour levels took alot more time as getting the right mixe between brightness and contrast was tricky without making it to bold. Getting the right titles wasnt too hard as during the planning we were able to find fonts we wanted from a website called Dafont to use and download them ready for editing. the website is great and easy to use, with fonts very much organised in style and genres making it really easy to find the right ones for our film. getting the position of the title at times was hard as wanted to use the empty spaces in shots without putting them over anything that might distort the text.

Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

The film industry audience is a hard one to please as there can be alot of variety when it comes to films, specifically when it comes to different genres. If one person likes rom-coms for example, they are most likely not going to like horror films maybe which makes it hard to come by. When it comes to what the audience wants, you can break it down into five categories genre pleasures, representational pleasures, style/aesthetic pleasures and narrative pleasures. In terms of our thriller, i feel that people would pick our film for the narrative and style/aesthetic pleasures as it has alot of variety in shot types, has very strong editing with lighting and fast pace cuts and the fact that most of the films story is left unanswered which leads to it being very enigmatic. With the bag being very mysterious and the story behind Edward doesn't reveal much, it builds up questions that i fell would keep the audience and want them to continue watching the film. With the main part of the enigma being the prop, it leaves a variety of questions flying around with what is in the bag, why it is so important and why would a teenage boy risk his life for it. in my opinion, that would keep alot of people watching on as there are some many things to learn from just the first two minutes of the film. Whether or not they get told straight away is also a mystery, with the story continuing, it could just go back to the being and so you learn later on the story with the end being the opening. Another strong area in the hopes that people continue to watch the film would be the story behind the main character. While not alot of the character is told in the first two minutes of the film. You do learn just by watching that he is very much an average boy that hasn't chosen to be in the situation he is. You can also see that he is very scared and has a sort of fragile mind in terms of fear with him getting thoughts of what might happen and being scared by just people walking down the street. with that in mind, i feel that it will make the more narrative pleasured people watch on and be interested in the whole film.

At the time of getting feedback for our rough cuts of the thrillers, mine was very much incomplete due to computer problems, but with what i did have i got some positive and negative comments back about things to improve and things that went well. One piece of positive feedback i got addressed the shot with Edward running down and around the corner and while doing so, placing his hand of the railing. When i came to editing that piece i knew from the start i wanted that to look smooth and to have the timing perfect, also i feel that shot reverse shots are a great way to break up shots and to add more variety which is what that scene needed. They also went on to say the shot with Edward walking back into the corner with nowhere to go, the shot was an interesting one as at the beginning of the shot Edwards figure and face is quite blurred. Obviously this was not planned, but i ended up using the shot and it worked out really well. following Edward into the corner was also interesting as we didn't use a dolly and so it was purely hand filmed, which help build on the effect of Edward stumbling back into the corner.

One piece of feedback was that the sound was quite bad in some places and that the wind levels were very loud over the natural sound of everything else. On several occasions i was told that the sound was the main problem and again mainly due to lack of progression because of the computer problems, but also from the wind. In response to several points about the sound i spent more time trying to fix it then i did editing because of how bad some of the recordings were. Luckily when filming, we had two cameras which meant while filming we could also get some sound with a microphone we had also brought. So to fix the problems, i had to take audio footage from clips and replace with others, i also had to overlap sounds sometimes. One piece of feedback said that when fixing the sound problems, try to keep in the raw sounds, which i did with most shots particularly with the bag shot. When it came to the shot of the bag with Edward gripping on to it tightly and opening, i had to take the good bits of the sound and mix it with other recordings we had done to get it right.

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

the audience for our thriller film would consist of older, more mature teenagers from about 16 and above, other ages would include around mid 20's and some even in the late 30's. The film could also have a small grouping of older viewers around 40's as the way it is film and edited with the colours and flashbacks give it more of a mature look, which works well with pretty much all older audiences. The gender for a thriller would be purely male orientated with maybe a few females, this is because of the amount of male characters that are in the thriller leading to me being interested. That being said, its also to do with the fact the the films is based around the idea of crime and violence which isn't commonly enjoyed much by females.

The Powerpoint below included some examples of some thrillers that are very common to ours, which would share the same audience. The graphs show the ratings different users on the site (IMDB) have given it with also clear understanding of what the ages were that rated, the graph also has a section for male and female and shows the different ratings from them.

Target Audience Research