Final Product

Evaluation : Question 4 - Use of technology

Evaluation : Question 3 - Skills Development

Codes and conventions:

Prior to this assignment I was not familiar with the codes and conventions of films at all, let alone thriller films. Thriller was never my favourite genre to watch as it is too scary for me, however after being given this task I began watching more thrillers as it would to give a rough idea of how the micro-elements conveyed the thrilling mood. Some thriller films that I watched were the Zodiac (2007), Mr. & Mrs Smith (2005), The Shallows (2016) and Inferno (2016), alongside these films I also watched the film Children of men (2006) a science fiction film. Watching thriller films and non-chiller films allowed me to compare the difference in the micro-elements and how the messages are conveyed to give the audience a certain emotion. 

Planning and organisation:

We began planning our film opening in December of 2016 which gave us 3 months to plan, film, edit, present our rough cut to the class and reflect back on the feedback received. The planning process took longer than we had anticipated as we researched on which film opening we liked best and how we could adapt ideas so it would be suitable for ours.  Our filming and location scouting process was done within 2 days which I thought was a very efficient use of our time. We were able to film in a short span of time as we had plan which shot we wanted to get and what to look for at the filming location before going to film.

Camerawork:

My camerawork has improved the most as I research on how to film particular shots which allowed me to experiment with the filming equipment we had at the time. 

Visual Effect:

I began this project without any idea of what visual effect meant as well as how to create them. I was personally taught the way on how to add the vignette by Eye as she learnt from a video on youtube. In the shot which our title is shown, the text was added using After Effects. I also used youtube to find tutorials to do this which allowed me to explore other tools on the application.

Editing:

I only had experience using iMovie which is a very basic application. Throughout creating this assignment I learnt how to edit simple things such as putting clips together as well as creating key-frames. Along this I also learnt how to colour correct which transformed the lighting and the mood of our opening.  We often worked on one laptop and discussed the choice of the lighting and the narrative structure of the clips.

Creative Confidence:

At first I had some difficulty coming up with ideas on how I wanted our outcome to look, however as I looked at examples of thriller openings and discussing with Claire and Eye we came up with an idea. Claire, enjoys the genre of thriller and horror which meant she was able to give us ideas of the what our psychological thriller is trying to convey. We each gave ideas of what we thought might work and whether we would be able to find the props. Some ideas were rejected and the rest made it to our final opening. 

Evaluation: Question 2 - Distribution

How would it be distributed as a real media text?

As our film is presumably going to be on a niche market and it is based on the theme of how society perceives beauty leading to psychological issues a specific standpoint. Therefore, our film may not appeal to a large group of people in comparison to blockbuster films. We would enter our film into a film festival possibly the Screamfest Horror Films Festival since it aims at fans of horror films which thriller is similar to. The audience at the film festival would directly be our target audience as they already are fans of a similar genre, who would possibly give word of mouth recommendations to people they know increasing the exposure of our film "Skin".

If Skin was to receive an award at the festival a "buzz" would be created meaning there will be critics who would review our films on sites such as the Roger Ebert website. Film critic websites consumers are most likely fans of movies, ergo our film is more likely to appeal to them compared to someone who does not watch films. This could help to broaden our group of audience and increase the reputation of the production company.

In addition, we would work with the distribution and production company Broadgreen Pictures which specialises in motion pictures and independent films with a specific audience type. The production company also has had years of experience and is responsible for the films The Neon Demon (2016), Green Room (2016) and Wish upon (2017).

The film The Neon Demon is very similar to our film since it is also a thriller as well as a low budget film of $7 million. The film The Neon Demon was co-distributed by Amazon Studios who distributed the film through Amazon video, an online streaming site. Our film could also be distributed by Amazon studios in order to be seen by internet users.

Our film would be released in Theatres during October as the Halloween celebration would provide the perfect gloomy environment to watch our film.

To possibly reach out to younger audiences, our film could be release on other online streaming sites such as Netflix, iTunes and Hulu plus. Online streaming sites are very common in young teens as it is inconvenient for them to travel to the cinema. 

Evaluation: Question 2 - Target audience

How does your product engage with audiences?
Our film opening is most likely to have a niche target audience who are interested in psychological thrillers combined with the obsession of beauty. This may mean that women will be more interested in our film since the main purpose of our opening shows the extreme extent of an obsession to beauty. 

Here I used the website yougov.profiles to explore the target audience of thrillers and films which may have similar elements to our film opening. The results I selected shows the demographics, annual income, professions and personality of the main audience of the films.

Analysis of Yougov.profile results:
From the results I found that most people who are watch the films are 30 years old or older. This may be because those who are younger find the imagery too graphic or violent for their preference. People who are younger may also have less time to watch films as they are still in school. The annual income  of the majority of the audience varies from less than $20,000 to more than $100,000 which means that the genre thriller attracts people of all income levels. I also noticed that 3 out of the 4 films I have selected, the audience is involved in Arts which may result in them enjoying the enigmas allowing them to think creatively and imagine all the solutions to the enigmas.


This is our ideal target audience for our film:

I chose to focus our target audience on women as I saw an opportunity in the consumer market since the majority of audience who watch thriller films are men. Targeting on women would result in less competition in the market for movies based on the idea of the perception of beauty and taking an obsession of beauty to an extremity. Since the antagonist a woman and her target protagonist are also women, female audiences may be able to understand the antagonist's thoughts better resulting in a more effective film.

Evaluation : Question 1 - Representation

How does it represent social groups or issues?

A persons appearance plays  a large role on how they fit into their social life. Our film opening shows a representation of a woman's dissatisfaction with her looks as she age which causes her to act to an extreme level, murder. We chose to base our character on a women as they are the majority of people who go into facial manipulation and are affected by the opinion that society has of them. As our group consisted of 3 girls we thought this idea of looking beautiful to satisfy society also applied to us.

Furthermore, society nowadays have a perception of the "perfect" women who looks like the front cover of a magazine. In reality the photos have been manipulated as scar, stretch marks and wrinkles have been erased. This idea is represented in our film by the collage board where the antagonist cuts up faces of celebrities who she see as beautiful to form her own plan of a perfect face, by which she executes by murdering younger girls and uses their skin on her own body to hide her flaws.

Example of magazine covers we see today:

The woman's character has been similarly executed in reality by a french artist called "Orlan" who
uses her own body and plastic surgery to make "carnal art". She transforms her face to contradict the commonly standard of beauty. Although in the film opening the women does not challenge the standard of beauty but rather goes along with it as the character is fixated with becoming beautiful. However the message that the film opening/movie is trying to convey is the same, that is showing the extent that a person can go if they listen to the perception that society has of beauty and why people should not follow what society says.

An artwork by Orlan

Evaluation : Question 1 - Conventions

How does your product use of challenge conventions:

Convention: the generally accepted way of doing things/ what the audience expect to see.

Common conventions of thriller which was used in our film opening and is expected in our "film":

• The antagonist ensnares the protagonist in an increasingly complex web, until the protagonist feels isolated and helpless.
• The narrative centres upon a crime E.g theft, murder
• A series of enigmas are set up - only to be solved at the end.
• The narrative presents extraordinary events in ordinary situations/ settings.
• The micro-elements are used to build suspense

The location is established in this shot. The room can be seen with a simplistic layout, which is common in most apartments. It provides the idea of an ordinary situation which the audience can easily relate to. This is common in thrillers as it is one of its conventions.

This panning shot of the credits was inspired by the credit sequence of the film How to kill a Mocking Bird (1962). In the credit sequence of the film, an extreme close up is used to show small details that contribute to the storyline of the movie. We used this idea to creatively show our credits by a panning shot of the woman's desk and her collage board, which helps to tell the story of who the woman is and what differs her from normal people.

The idea of a murderer's "planning board" is rather common in thriller films as it allows the thoughts of the murderer to be revealed to the audience. The murderers board often also show what the character is planning to do and is used as an action code.

Here are some scenes from other films which I explored as a reference to this scene for my film opening.

A scene from Luther Series 3 episode 1

A scene from Ex-Machina.

A scene from American Psycho.

The fonts are presented in white as it creates a contrast between darker shadows and the text itself. We chose the font New Times Roman since it was easy to read. The shape of the text signifies the woman's prosperity as the font appears very traditional and classic.

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In this last shot an aftermath of a murder is shown. This concept is inspired by the film Se7en (1995)  in which the act of murder is not seen until the murderer is revealed at the end of the movie. Similarly,  throughout our opening the audience is given hints of who the woman is, her method and her motivation of killing along with the mis-en-scenes the enigmas are unraveled.

Another film which uses a similar idea of showing the aftermath prior of the murder prior to the act of murder is the film Taking Lives (2004). The opening scene ended with an enigma of "What has the man just done?" "Why did he have to kill the other character?". We used the same method of ending the opening on a cliffhanger to keep the audience engaged and wanting to watch the rest of our "film".