Our opening title sequence

 

CCR4

"How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project?"

To answer this question I made a Wix website, whereby I was able to clearly separate the integration of technologies into pre-production, production and post-production.

Heres a link to my website:

CCR4

CCR 3

"How did your production skills develop throughout this project?"

I answered this question via a Prezi, whereby I was able to show the development through the use of a timeline aspect.

CCR 2

"How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?"

I answered this question through a blog post, whereby I further made a film poster for my opening title sequence. 

When deciding our target audience we had to take into account the violence included in our opening title sequence. I researched the BBFC, whereby I was able to find out what was legally allowed in films depending on their ratings. Here's a link to my blog post on it.

BBFC research post

I additionally looked into our specific target audience by comparing our product to others, here's a link to the blog post.

link to our target audience blog post

Therefore, when taking into account my research, our film would have to be at least a 15, due to the violent theme throughout. I believe that our main target audience would be men aged 20-25, due to elements of Laura Mulveys theory "The Male Gaze" whereby our protagonist is a good looking female character, as well as this other films, such as The Hunt and The Hunger Games mainly target this audience. Despite this, there is a further secondary female target audience, as our protagonist is a strong female character who subverts common stereotypes in other movies, which highlights female empowerment.

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One way that we engaged our audience was through the use of enigma codes throughout our sequence. Roland Barthes enigma codes theory is when film directors leave unanswered questions for the audience as they create cliffhangers. This is typical for thriller films so we decided to follow these conventions. A key way in which we did this is by having the girl running and screaming as the first shot in the sequence, this could leave the audience asking questions such as "why is she running?" "Who is she?" "who is she running from?" etc. Another enigma code we used is when the girl kills one of the hunters, although we don't know whether she will kill the second or if he will get to her first. We did this to leave our sequence on a cliffhanger, whereby the audience is engaged and wants to keep them watching the rest of the movie.

We followed some of the typical character representations of an action-thriller genre, although by making our protagonist a strong female character, this subverts common stereotypes further engaging our audience. From our opening title sequence alone it appears to the audience that the main character is going to be either the hunter or the girl, the hunter is clearly the villain and holds more power and status, we made this clear in a number of ways, through the use of costume as well as camera angles, whereby we used a high angle shot of him to show the status within the scene. Despite this, the girl is portrayed as the victim and the more likeable character because of this, we also give her more of a personality which highlights her importance in the rest of the movie, by making the girl not so black and white the audience are engaged as they want to know what she's going to do next, highlighting Blumber and Katz theory of "uses and gratification" whereby the secondary, female audience (and the predominant, male audience) are able to recognise role models within products that they share similar characteristics with, highlighting her strong-minded, intelligent characteristics. We further gave her more screen time which highlights the importance she holds over the hunter, which subverts the status shown at the beginning, highlighting her importance within the film. By adhering to and subverting from common stereotypes the audience is engaged as the film follows basic conventions of the genre whilst not being so predictable.

We further used the location to engage our audience, whereby we shot our entire sequence in the woods. This location creates instant tension, as forests can often signify isolation and are often locations in horror films. Many other similar products such as The Hunt and The Hunger Games are set in the woods, helping to reiterate our genre. The location creates tension from the offset, which automatically engages audiences and keeps them interested in the rest of the film.

Additionally, the use of sound and editing helps to engage the audience, whereby we had little to no dialogue and used a fast-paced soundtrack which created tension throughout the entire scene. This soundtrack further helped establish our genre as well as creating tension within the sequence as it suggested that something bad was going to happen within the sequence, due to its intensity. Moreover, we used linear editing, whereby everything happened in chronological order, this helped to encapsulate the audience as it fully emersed them within the sequence as they were experiencing the events at the same time as the characters. This highlights Blumbler and Katz theory of “uses and gratification” whereby the audience are able to escape into the movie through the use of tension as they are so invested in the narrative.

Finally, to engage our target audience we used the conventional camera angles that are typical of action and thriller films. action films typically use a variation of camera angles, including: high angles, low angles, close-ups, tracking shots, and panning shots. By including a wide range of these in our sequence, we were able to engage audiences. For example, we used low angles to make the hunter look more powerful and superior to the girl. By doing this we were able to show the audience who the villain is as well as who holds the power in the scene. We further used close-ups to show the characters' feelings through the use of facial expressions and body language, this helps the audience to further understand them.


I think that we were successful at engaging our target as we created a suspenseful atmosphere which almost traps the audience in the scene with the characters, keeping them engaged and wanting to know more. Despite this, if we were to make our sequence again I would have probably included more action as well as more violence to intensify the suspense, making our audience even more gripped.

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How the poster engages the audience.

The additional use of the colour scheme makes the poster more engaging for the audience. Prior to making the poster I googled colours that go well with one another, I knew I wanted to use green in order to reiterate the woodland location, by using yellow writing on the dark green background, the title fully engages the audience's attention as they go very well with one another.

How the choices on the poster help to sell/distribute our film 

I believe if our film were to actually be released Blumhouse Productions would most likely distribute it. Blumhouse Productions is an American production company founded in the year 2000 by Jason Blum. it mainly specifies in horror movies, although they also make thrillers, some examples of their films are: The Hunt, The Purge, Get Out, insidious and Paranormal Activity. The film most similar to ours is “The Hunt”, although The Purge also resembles elements of our sequence throughout the movie franchise. Despite Blumhouse mainly specifying in the horror genre, they create jaw-dropping twists in within the narrative which relays elements from our action thriller.

I also think Blumhouse would be successful at marketing our movie, as they have effectively distributed and provided marketing campaigns for similar films with similar target audiences. Additionally, Blumhouse is known for producing low-budget movies that do exceptionally well and go on to become highly profitable franchises. I believe that our movie with the right marketing could go on to become highly profitable and possibly even a franchise, and Blumhouse could massively benefit us.
Moreover, I believe that if our film were to have a cinema release it would be relatively short as a production company like Blumhouse makes most of their money through physical sales, therefore we’d have a limited cinema run with This is the Day, before we release it on streaming services such as Amazon Prime or Netflix, where many of Blumhouse other films are streamed.
Although, if we did show our film in the cinema, the cinematic experience would be exceptional due to the use of camera, sound, and mise-en-scene, as we included several enticing camera angles as well as high-quality sound. Additionally, the lighting within the movie would look incredible on the big scenes at the cinema, which is a large part of the cinema experience.
Furthermore, the use of enigma codes and cliffhangers is so special about Blumhouse, whereby the audience is always so engaged due to high tensions and suspense. Due to our target audience being 15 years and above, but specifically men aged 21 to 25, our marketing campaign would rely heavily on social media. This is typical of Blumhouse whereby they post daily/weekly updates on their Instagram @blumhouse regarding all of their films, this page has over 374,000 followers on. Therefore, when they post new content to their page their followers are like-minded and clearly take a liking to other films Blumhouse has released.

I would also use other social media such as Twitter, whereby Blumhouse had a trending hashtag, #ThePurge where fans discussed what they would do in order to combat The Purge, this reaches more target audiences as hashtags and content is easily spreadable on Twitter. This highlights Henry Jenkins's "spreadability" theory where he states "If it doesn't spread its dead" when referencing the distribution of media, highlighting new media needs to be digital and easy to "spread" in order to be successful.
Moreover, Blumhouse also produced "Paranormal Activity", the marketing campaign on this was labelled "so ingenious it's scary", Blumhouse worked alongside Paramount, whereby there was a live website where the general public was able to "vote for the film to come to their city", whereby whichever city had the most votes is where the movie would be released.

Additionally, Blumhouse is releasing a new film on July 29th, 2022, they have started their marketing now in order to generate awareness, by doing so, the audience is keen to watch it as the use of marketing has meant that lots of media companies, such as The New York Times and Vulture are talking about it. They've further created a trailer that has received over 70,000 views despite the release date still being over a month away.

To conclude, trailers are always necessary when releasing a new movie, The Purge movie has received over 40 million views on YouTube. Uploading a trailer is cheap yet very effective when releasing a movie, and the ability to target a specific audience is further important.

CCR TASK 1

 "How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues"

I made a slide to show in order to answer the question, whereby I was able to show the ways in which my product subverts or represents social groups or issues. 

Post production part 2

Prior to even shooting our title sequence we knew that we were going to have some sort of soundtrack, although due to copyright as well as the mood of the song we wanted we decided to go against this original song.

We created tension through the use of fast-paced editing whereby there is constant action yet the audience doesn't know what is going to happen next nor who will eventually get killed. Moreover, we created suspense through the use of multiple soundtracks and sound effects, whereby one soundtrack is fairly sombre with a contrast of instruments that reflects the events within the scene, whereas the other soundtrack has a faster pace, the use of drums gives it a more tribal feel as well as creating tension as the audience feel almost as though its a chase. Moreover, tension was created through the use of suspenseful yet abstract camera angles whereby we enhanced the mysterious connotations to the forest by focusing many of our shots on trees as well as the use of ambient sounds of leaves. 

Our film is targeted at people aged 15 and older, this age group gets bored relatively quickly due to apps such as TikTok whereby videos only last for 15 seconds. Therefore, due to the fast-paced editing as well as our sequence only being two minutes, this leaves little time for people to look away or become bored. Films similar to ours (inc "The Hunt" and "The Purge") are targeted at audiences over the age of 15, hence our guidance for our age limit. Moreover, the gruesome aspect whereby one of the girls gets her throat slit helps to engage the audience within the first 10 seconds. Moreover, I think that the target audience would want to continue watching the movie, as we left the sequence on a cliffhanger, as we don't know whether or not the girl is going to survive the rest of the hunt or not, therefore the audience will continue watching in order to find out the backstory as to why the shoot is taking place or to find out whether or not the girl survives and what will happen next.

we chose to only have 4 titles, the production company, the funding company, the director, and the title of the film. We used a random word generator as well as said random words that we thought would sound good in order to come up with all of the names bar the title, as prior to filming we knew that we wanted to use the song "This is the Day" by The The, as we all agreed it would work well in a contrapuntal type of way. Additionally, we knew that we wanted a big, bold font for the title, so we looked through different fonts and chose one that we thought would look the best. We then changed the size of specific words in order to make other words appear more important. We decided to use yellow words on top of a black background in order to make it bolder and stand out as it will be the last thing the audience will see. Moreover, common connotations to yellow are: Happiness, purity, joy, and optimism, therefore these titles juxtapose the narrative of the movie. Although, on the other hand, yellow can also represent: jealousy, betrayal, and danger which could foreshadow the events of the movie.

Before we adjusted any sound we made sure that the order of the shots was correct. When editing the sound we began by listening to the entire edited sequence and then we were able to detach the audio from the video and adjust it until it was perfect! Because we used an external microphone there were two sets of audios so we listened to both of them and then deleted the one that wasn't so good. We then made sure that the audio we liked was on the left and right sides. Once the basic audio was completed we then looked at different sound effects, we knew we certainly needed a gunshot as well as ambient sound of the forest, by looking in already saved sounds on the computer we were able to use realistic sound effects that we knew wouldn't get copyrighted. Finally, we added various soundtracks, the first being an upbeat drum track which sets the scene of an intense chase, we then switch to a soundtrack which is more mellow yet eerie that a peer of ours, Felix W, made for us, specifically for our sequence.

To conclude, I think that our opening title sequence turned out much better than I had anticipated. I personally think that the flow of the sequences works incredibly well as nothing feels out of place and each scene seamlessly passes into the next. Moreover, the fact that we took so many takes on the day of the shoot really helped us out when editing as we were able to use multiple takes and angles when showing one specific scene. A couple of things went wrong when editing, although it wasn't entirely down to my group and I, as a few times Premiere Pro completely shut down and deleted all of the changes we had made, this set us back on editing therefore we had to redo quite a bit.

Post production: Part 1

We began editing by watching all of the footage back and labeling the ones we liked by character and the specific shot, for example "Zaza Close-up Tree Shot 1". We liked the majority of the shots so began putting the rushes into bins depending on the character to make it easier to edit, as we had a rough idea from our shot list the order we wanted to edit in.

There were no crucial mistakes that we noticed, although there were some shots we didn't use solely due to us not liking them. an example of this is a shot whereby we panned the camera to show the sky and then tilted it down to introduce one of the characters, due to the placement of it in our sequence it stopped the sequence flowing as it didn't fit with the pace and the tension that had already been created. Moreover, there were a few shots whereby the characters were walking the wrong way or the composition was off so we decided not to use them. In addition to this, the sound was a bit of an issue whereby our only line, "have fun" which tells the audience lots about the narrative wasn't really picked up very well in the shot we wanted to use, therefore our only options were to either use another take, get rid of the scene (which could lead to later confusion) or unlink the audio and use it alongside the take we actually liked- although it may not have matched up. therefore we decided to firstly try and turn the sound up on the shot we liked although it didn't sound great so we just used several takes and made sure we just used the audio from the one where you can hear the dialogue. 

Some early choices we made that shaped our final opening title sequence include the use of costume, sound, and composition within the frame. Prior to filming, we made a shot list whereby we planned the shots we deemed necessary and put them into order, this gave us a rough idea of everything we needed to do on the day as well as helped us plan when editing as it helped us gauge where everything went. A crucial part to our sequence is the ending whereby we want to leave the audience on a cliffhanger and make them want to watch more, we initially intended for her to walk over the hunter's body while the titles play although we decided this wouldn't be as effective as it makes the opening sequence more into a short film, therefore we cut while she was still killing the hunter, on the day we made our protagonist- Daisy, hit the camera with the back of the gun which blacked out the entire screen, although by doing this didn't look very realistic as her movements were much slower than other shots we got, therefore instead of blacking out the screen with the base of the gun, we just cut to a black screen and bright yellow titles. Furthermore, from the offset, we knew that we wanted the hunters walking from the left to the right, and in any confrontation we wanted the girl to be on the left, as much like reading a book the audience read the screen from the left to the right, therefore if anyone walks in from the right it can create tension and unease.

It's difficult to pinpoint two choices that we made when editing, although as an introduction to our opening scene we were going to have one of our hunters - Stu - walking around the forest, this would set the scene as It shows off the location as well as his costume, being tweed and a gun. From this shot, we were going to cut to a black screen whereby some titles, including the production company and director, would appear, and then the action would begin. Although, we decided to get rid of this shot of the hunter as we decided that it would be more gripping if it started with action as people would want to watch more as they're gripped from the offset. In addition to this, we were going to have the protagonist - Daisy - run from her hideout, through trees and then "stalk" the hunter, and we took several takes of this one-shot, although we decided that due to the length of it, it slowed down the flow and therefore broke down the tension, therefore, we decided to just cut from her in the hut to her stalking the hunter, the faster pace helps heighten the tension as more action is taking place in less time, therefore the audience is more likely to be gripped as they don't want to stop watching in case they miss anything.