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

Our primary target audience was originally quite broad aimed at young men (16-25) who are fans of action/thriller genres but it could also include young women too (possibly as a secondary audience) who would go along with their boyfriends and even for just the tomboy who also enjoys the genre. 

We would expect it to appeal not only nationally but internationally, but because of the wide genre and the fact our target audience isn’t very niche. 

We consider our target audience to be thrill seekers looking for suspense, who like hanging out with their friends and who can relate to our young protagonist by what clothes he wears, the problems he faces in life and the way he talks etc. 

We chose this audience within planning and production as we thought it would be an exciting to create action sequences and make our film appeal to them, despite being very similar to other films of the genre. 

AUDIENCE PROFILE:

Name: James

Age: 21

How often he goes to the cinema: Once a month

Interests: 

-Competitive and extreme sports,

-Hanging out with friends,

-Girls, 

-Playing video games such as COD, 

-Watching action movies

- Media technologies such as the iphone

What he looks for in a film: 

-Suspense,

-Action, 

-Violence,

- A small element of romance 

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

We attracted our target audience in 6 different ways:

1)By appealing to their pleasures such as thrill seeking and adrenaline pumping activities such as sports and we tried to portray this through the chase sequences and music etc. 

2) Engaging the audience in the realism of our film, that this could potentially be happening, as it involves gang culture- like films like Kidulthood did, engaging and addressing real issues. 

3) The use of a male protagonist could also potentially attract our audience by allowing them to relate to him, and recognise his fashion styles, manner of speech etc. 

4)The overall genre appeals greatly to our target audience and by conforming to the usual expectations of the genre it will attract them, however we feel by having a slightly unconventional young protagonist it will appeal to our young target audience even more as they will be able to not only obtain the action and adrenaline but be able to relate. 

%of people who enjoy action/thriller films, under and over 25

5)Having an unlikely, almost anti-hero protagonist will keep the audience on the edge of their seats to see whether he will actually have the skill necessary to escape the clearly more experienced stronger, tougher gang members. 

6) Keeping the audience intrigued with the build up of enigma codes in our opening sequence e.g. why is he alone? why is he looking shifty? why is he entering the forest?

After seeing our audience feedback it was reassuring to see that our film had successfully appealed to young men between the ages of 15-18 this was a fraction lower then the age we had originally intended to market the film towards, however, it is still  above the age limit to what we had based the film, 15. Along with this we also noticed that some females had also enjoyed the film rating it with an average of 7/10 where as the males within the audience averaged it out at at 9/10.

IMG_0017 THE WITNESS QUESTIONAIRE


IMG_0015 THE WITNESS QUESTIONAIRE

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

ALL OF THE EQUIPMENT USED:
Production Hardware:

• Sony Camera
• Sony Mini DV tape
• Tripod
• Shot gun microphone
• Headphones
• Still camera- for location reccie

Post Production Hardware:

• Edit suite HP z600 workstation
• Dell computer
• Microphone for voiceover dubbing
• Mac computer

Post production software:

• Adobe Premier Pro cS3
• Live titles (on mac)
• Adobe sound booth cs3

The main thing I learnt about technology from this product was that the manual settings on a camera are very sensitive and easy to change accidentally.

On one of our shoots, as shooting outside and having to constantly hold the camera, we somehow managed to alter the white contrast on our shoot, and this became very problematic in the editing process which ended up needing a complete re-shoot as the colour correction on Adobe Premier Pro could not fix it.

I also improved my skill on matching contrast and lighting from one shot to another, and as our shoot was an outdoor shoot this was necessary as we could not always predict the weather of that day.

Lastly, for the first time i was able to work on the mac and learn from scratch how to use LiveType to create the titles for our sequence, this was a lot easier then expected and i learnt how to change fonts and add textures and effects to the font.

Through the post and pre production and production generally i have also learnt how to utilise the blog a lot more confidently, and overall my confidence with the technology has increased greatly. 

In hindsight I would have the camera on automatic settings always when working outdoors, to prevent any mishaps happening again. I also now know how to work and adjust the manual settings on a camera after being shown by the media technician. When trying to create unusual shots through trees etc it was very hard to balance the tripod and often needed someone holding it whilst another person pressed record, therefore in the future I would invest in a gorilla pod which allows you to attach the camera to any surface, and this would give us more hands to direct the actors. 

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression to the full product?

I feel that from the preliminary task I have become a lot more confident and good at editing continuity sequences such as match on action. 

Lewis's match on action wit his
running. His Right foot goes up..

Here his right foot lands

And here his left foot is being brought up to run on.

I also feel that progressing from this I have learnt on shoots to always automatically check continuity such as the 180 degree rule. 

I definitely feel the reccie done by Sam was very beneficial, as it meant we could get a feel of where we were shooting before actually going there and we could picture it easier in our minds to then portray onto the storyboard. 


I also learnt that it is much better to get too much footage than too little, and as well as using a shot list, be spontaneous as well -as a lot of the best footage comes from this. 

In the editing process I learnt that having a timeline for each group member was good, as it allowed us to experiment and then come together and put all the things we unanimously liked together to create the final piece. 

Working as a team can get frustrating at times, but in hindsight I think we delegated jobs efficiently, working to everyone strengths but also allowing them to improve on their weaknesses. 


Me and Sam unfortunately had to miss the last week of editing and so had to trust Lewis and James to finish it for us, we made sure we stayed in contact throughout the week and was so was there to give any advice if they ever needed it. 

Editing Schedule

IMG_0014 THE WITNESS EDITING TIMETABLEThis is an example of the editing schedules we drew up for the editing process. As you can see we made sure we were all editing as much as possible, not only as individuals but as a group too, as this meant we could make group decisions, then carry on perfecting these alone if necessary. 

Overall i think our schedules were very efficient, as they gave other group members insight into who they'd be working with and allowed the teachers to stay up to grips with what we were continuing to do. Not only this but they allowed us to set targets for each week to hopefully keep.

My responsibilities with equipment and on shoot

For our first shoot i took home the tripod, to remember to bring to the location the next day. On the shoot i was in charge of fixing the camera onto the tripod shoe.

On our second shoot my responsibility was the camera, which i took home the afternoon before. In the evening before the shoot i checked the camera batteries were fully charged and that we had the right tape in the camera, stopped at the right point (so as not to go over any footage previously).

On the shoots overall i was in charge of looking after bags, and when all three boys were in the running/chasing shots, i was the designated filmer.

I also had a small part to play in the film, as the dead girl being dragged, this meant i had to be responsible for finding the outfit and doing as what i was told by the director to ensure we got the correct footage.

Our Final Idea- Treatment

treatment

Overall i am very happy with our group proposal, as i think it is a very strong concept, and as it has a broad target audience we can aim to attract them in many different ways. We have also chosen a genre that all of our group members enjoy watching, so when editing i believe this will come in very handy to get the right pace and music for the desired effect on the audience. As all the characters in the opening sequence are male i believe i will have to be doing more shooting, which i enjoy so i will take on the challenge head on.