Research
Thriller Research
Title Sequence analysis:
An opening sequence is the method used by films or television programme to present their project. They are shown at the very beginning and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. There may or may not be accompanying music. Where opening credits are built into a separate sequence of their own, the correct term is title sequence.
I researched the opening the titles of the film 'Rush Hour 3'. The titles include the name of the film studio to give them the credit for the film. However most of the titles are the actors that are in the film. In this case the two main actors are Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. By doing this it allows the audience to know who is in the film. I will include these features in my final product. The titles are nice and bold and clear which makes it easy for the audience to read. They are also in a nice font but this one is easy to read. However they are not taking away from the action of the opening sequence.The timings of the titles are also well done by the producer. The titles stay on the screen for about 7 seconds. This is plenty of time for the viewers to read it. They also changed nicely when the shot changes so has good continuity. This research task has allowed me to see what sort of things i need to include in my opening title and sequence. We will used titles simular to Rush Hour 3. Plain but easy to read. We also need to ensure that the titles dont take away from the action in the film.
Opening Sequence analysis:
Typical Storylines- not all thrillers are about violent crime, but they are different from mysteries because of the angle they take. A mystery is about solving a crime that has already happened. The killer's identity is hidden until the end because otherwise, there would be no mystery, right? A thriller is about a crime (or another type of disaster) that is about to happen ... unless the hero can stop it. The reader often knows who the villain is from the very beginning... even watches over the villain's shoulder as evil is being committed.
Conventions of a Thriller:
In conclusion most thrillers all involve a mystery and crime to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. Most of the time they also involve a criminal and innocent public. This helps me because i now know what conventions I should use when creating my thriller opening sequence.
How the opening sequence introduces Character and Genre:
Before I started to plan my opening sequence i needed to find out what other openig sequences to Thriller films were like and what conventions they had. By doing this i could see what sort of things i needed to include in my own opening sequence and how i needed to grip the audience in the first 2 or so minutes.
In conclusion i have discovered that when creating my opening sequence, it needs to be quite slow so the audience can take in what is happening and have time to predict what is going to happen. By doing this it will increase tension and intensity and that is what we want the audience to feel whilst watching our opening titles.
Analysis of thriller films:
Institutional Research
Using a variety of sources, I carried out a market analysis of the thriller genre for the year 2011. I found out how many thriller films were released that year, how profitable the genre is, which films were most successful and why and what the characteristics of the audience of a thriller are. This helps me because i now know how likely it is my film would make a profit and what i need to do to make it successful.
History of Thriller
I did some research into the history of the thriller genre. I found that over the years it has changed a lot and there are many more conventions of a thriller than there used to be. I believe this is because of big, successful thriller films. They bring something new to the genre and because they are successful other filmmakers use the conventions. Here is the link to my Thriller Timeline:
Film Studio Research
Here I identified film studios known for producing thriller films. In the slideshow I gave a brief overview of two studios and have analysed their recent success. Here is the link to my presentation:
Funding for small Films
Some smaller films find it hard to get finance fro their film. Unlike big blockbusters it is not as easy to raise funds for the production. Here are some of the ways they get finance to make smaller films:
Film Classification
BBFC Guidlines is how a film is defined by age. This rating tells you how old you have to be to watch the film. We needed to research into this to find out what the rating for our filmshould be, especially because there is a lot of violence and murder in it. If we used the wrong rating, we could get into a lot of trouble when the film is released.
Affter researching the guidlines i have decided our film should be a 15. This is because there is a lot of violence and blood in it so therefore will not be suitable for anyone younger. However it isnt that goory as you cant see to much guts for it to be an 18. Also the language isnt to bad and there are no sex scenes. This is why i think 15 will be a suitable age rating.
I used the BBFC classification guide to help me create this Prezzi.
Audience Profile
Every film has an audience profile. This is a description of the characteristics of the people who make up a target audience. Some typical characteristics useful in describing segments include media habits (magazines, TV, newspaper, radio, and Internet, etc. They're several different categories in an audience profile:
Age- The age of your target audience is important. If you make a film that is unsuitable for under 15 year olds for example, you need to make it clear that the target audience is 15+. Otherwise the audience wont be happy and this may damage their feedback on the film.
Gender- Some films are aimed at a specific gender. For example romance films tend to be aimed at females, whilst action films at males. Know the gender of your target audience is helpful as you know what sort of things to include in your films.
Social background- Social background refers to a persons history in terms of how they were raised, their ethnicity and their family's background. Social background may also encompass the kind of friends you have. For example a higher class person may not be interested in a film filled with blood and horror.
Interests and character types- Interest is very important when thinking about your audience profile. You need to make sure that you have your audiences likes and character types in the film. At the end of the day if you do not include their likes, they wont want to watch it, simple!
Region- You need to think about where your film is going to be launched. For example if it is going to be released in England, the language should be English. However there are films that are spoken in other languages such as French and Russian that use subtitles. Sometimes this can be used to a good effect.
Socio economic group- Market researchers divide the population into 6 socio-economic groups or social grades, which are based on the occupation, or job, of the head of a household. These grades give some idea of a households income and how it might be spent. They are:
A- Higher managerial, administrative, professional e.g. Chief executive, senior civil servant, surgeon
B - Intermediate managerial, administrative, professional e.g. bank manager, teacher
C1- Supervisory, clerical, junior managerial e.g. shop floor supervisor, bank clerk, sales person
C2 - Skilled manual workers e.g. electrician, carpenter
D- Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers e.g. assembly line worker, refuse collector, messenger
E - Casual labourers, pensioners, unemployed e.g. pensoiners without private pensions and anyone living on basic benefits
In conclusion I now know that it is very important to be very clear on who my target audience is before I even start thinking about what my film is going to contain. This is because if I do not have a target audience or target my product at the wrong group of people my film will not be a success as they will not be interested in it. For example if my film was based on a rough gang on the streets i would probably aim my film at the socio-economic group D/E. However for my film i will aim it at the socio economic group C1 as the location is a nice everyday house and the people being murdered are not rich yet not poor, such as the house owners and the policeman.
Wants and needs of our Target Audience
Audience research is helpful to find the wants of your target audience. Without audiences there would be no media. We knew who our target audience was. We identified our target audience by using my research above. We then found a group of people that fitted our target audience and used them to find what they like in a thriller film and particually our idea to make a thriller film. My group did this by conducting a focus group with members of our target audience. We hoped to find out:
What media do they consume?
What do they enjoy about the media they consume?
Which aspects do they most enjoy?
How do they rate our idea?
How could we improve our idea?
Here is the link to the video we produced:
Analyse our audience feedback
Before we began to produce our film we carried out some primary reasearch. We decided to use a focus group. This was so we could see what our target audience thought of our ideas. We hoped to learn weather or not we had the right target audience. We believe our target audience were the people we interviewed so asked them questions just to make sure we were right. We also hoped to find out weather they liked our ideas such as the storyline or not.
Our
first focus group was 4 of our friends; being our mates this hindered the
research a lot as they did not take it very seriously. The members were Ryan,
Regan, Jarvis and Gian. Furthermore we asked them 8 questions in which only
some were answered seriously and still the answers were not very helpful (blunt
answers). After trying to edit this and make it useful we decided it would not
work and we will have to produce more research with another focus group.
Although we haven’t decided who will be taking part we have made a decision
upon the questions and location which will both be the same as before.
We
have learned that an audience close to our age would be interested in our film,
which is good knowledge as we are aiming for 15 and over and this will mean
people close to our age. But for information that’s about all we had gathered
from our first focus group. We suggested giving them the opportunity to give us
a name for our title but none of them had any ideas, therefore we will be
asking this again for our second focus group. Unfortunately their preference of
the thriller genre over other genres was not good and also they had little
knowledge over the sub-genres and popular films in the thriller genre,
nevertheless this could also be because they were not taking it seriously.
We then decided to film another primary research which is above. We got much better results from this as we as a media student who we did not know and two slightly older males, so they were all in our target audience range and because we didn't know them, unlike the last research task we got sensible and helpful answers. We got some suggestions to how we could improve our opening sequence, such as having a car chase in there to create even more suspense. They also all agreed that they like psychological sub genre of a thriller films so we could perhaps think about adding some aspects of this into our video. Lastly I think we discovered that we are targeting our product at the right audience. I know this because all the members of our focus group were within our target audience and they all seemed to like our idea.
In conclusion I am very pleased that we found the time to re film our primary research as our first one to be honest didn't really help us at all.
Techniques I like
In media texts there are many effects, camera shots, editing techniques etc that producers use. I particular like cross fade editing. It is where the proceeding shot merges into the next shot. The longer the dissolve the more noticeable the superimposition becomes. This shot can be used in our media text. It can merge two shot of the crime scene where there has been a murder and another shot of the murderer in the house. This will boost the tension and suspense of our opening sequence for the audience. An example of a cross fade is belo
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