ORGANISATION

I keep me organised and up to date on my blog and for the rest of the As course I decided to create a Trello with three columbus labelled to do, doing and done so that I can move the cards once I had completed and posted that piece of work. 

This one I made for the work for September and October. 

PLANNING:RISK ASSESSMENT

I have created a Pintrest of pictures of the locations we are going to use in our opening. I have anotated the pictures of each location with a risk assessment and the points that we need to take into consideration when shooting in this location. 

Click here to view my location Pinterest.

RESEARCH:TARGET AUDIENCE

Do brands profile their audience? 

All major bands do careful research into their target audience. For example I investigated how NME researched their target audience, using profiling about gender, age, social class, economic power,social media habits and trends. 

I have also studied the uses and gratifications model of audience behaviour (Blumer and Katz 1973) and I know that audiences consume media that meets their needs. We are making a film for a target age bracket of older teens and young adults, witch might also be watched by people of their parents age, in other words a mainstream audience that also enjoys films of the thriller genre. 

I also know from my own experience and that of my friends that I will often gravitate towards  films and television programmes that feature people of my own age that might be undergoing similar problems and life experiences. Therefore our film is likely to feature characters similar to our target audience. 

I also know from my study of distribution methods employed by real distributors, having researched their role from the FDA website www.launchingfilms.com that my target audience use social media to get information about their leisure activities, so I need to research what social media my target audience uses. 

When I have been at the cinema, such as my recent visits to see What We Did On My Holiday and The Hunger Games Catching Fire- Part One, I did notice that the in cinema trailers featured films that were likely to appeal to the target audience already sitting in front of them. In other words the target audience for these future films was already a captive audience right there. I noticed that the audience for What We Did On Our Holiday tended to be a family audience but mostly older people rather than teenagers. After all I was with my middle age parents. However the audience for The Hunger Games was predominantly people of my age, a bit younger and a bit older. 

How do brands profile their audiences?
I investigated a brand that young people definitely consume, Kiss radio. Brands such as Kiss use viewer profiling to distinguish who they are aiming their product. These brands tend to group society for example age groups, gender and hobbies. I turned to their website to learn about their mission statement:

KISS 100 continues to successfully hit the mark with its young London target audience, reaching more 15-34s than any radio station in London. Every week 1.9 million listeners tune in to the best dance music on offer in London. Rickie, Melvin and Charlie reach 1.5m listeners across the UK and 783,000 listeners in London each week 
KISS is an iconic youth brand, which began life as a pirate station driving the dance and urban revolution. KISS introduced DJ’s like Judge Jules, Danny Rampling, Roger Sanchez, Spoony and Trevor Nelson and never stopped providing that passion, innovation and desire to break new ground, ensuring all the best new artists and DJ’s play their music on KISS with over 40 hours of specialist programming.KISS showcases Drum & Bass, R&B, Hip Hop, Dance, Garage, Dubstep, Deep House and Nu Disco and are always on the next big sound.  Shortee Blitz and DJ MK, Majestic, DJ EZ, DJ Swerve, DJ Hype, Sinden, WideBoys and DJ Pioneer all represent their music on KISS FM UK and the KISS Fresh channel showcases even more of the hottest and newest tunes with DJs like Ray Fox, Tough Love, DEVoultion etc and the KISSTORY channel provides 24/7 old skool & anthems.

From their website, I learned that their product was described as being targeted at 15-30 year old females. Also thought to be 'the latest fashions at affordable prices'. 

Marketing can be defined as: 
‘The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.’ 
This is the task facing the marketing manager who must realize a company cannot serve all the customers in a broad market. The customers are too numerous and diverse in their buying requirements. Instead marketing managers can become market focused by identifying their target market, anticipating their needs and fine tuning products and marketing programs to successfully meet their needs. The Arcadia Groups Ltd is the UK’s largest clothing retailer, with over 2000 outlets. The group comprises seven brand names – namely Topshop, Topman, Evans, Wallis, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and Burton. Each brand targets distinct market segments and many of them operate within leading positions in their respective markets. 

For this exercise we will look closely at the Topshop brand and its focus on the target market: 

Ø 15 – 30 Year old females 
Ø Who like pubbing, clubbing and have a sense of fun 
Ø Driven by a need to be fashionable and trendy 
Ø Like all trend setting magazines 
Ø Should remain loyal customers if the retailer maintains a reputation for being fashionable 

After some further research about finding a target audience I found that these are some of the main points of finding your audience for your band:

• Look at the age and gender of the people who would use your product ( take a survey).
• Find out your consumers income levels, this will make it easier to price your product.
• Notice the status of your target audience ( family,single,children). 

How do film makers profile their audiences?

It is much harder to find out information about a film audiences, however. Never the less one really excellent way is provided by exit polls witch are conducted when audiences leave film screenings. These are not always conducted because of the expense and when they are done, it is usually pre-release, in order to find out whether the film will hit the mark. I found some really useful data from the BFI website.

What did I discover from BFI exit polls about audiences?

I  used the BFI website to research films that are similar genre to the film opening I am creating. I then looked at the data and created a Pictochart to display the research. 

Click Here to view my Pictochart.

 

I used Pinterest to create a board on who our target audience may be. I looked a previous thriller films that may have a similar target audience to us and also the groups of people that our characters fall into. I used the knowledge that I had gained from my research to add other films that my target audience would also watch as I know trailers for similar genres of film are shown in the cinema. 

Click here to view my Pinterest and see the annotations I wrote for each pin.

PLANNING: DISTRIBUTION

I investigated and did research into how other companys distribue  their brand to their targeted audience.  I noticed when looking into how the Hunger Games Mocking Jay part 1 that they used the sites, Facebook, Twitter, youtube and an official website to do so. 

When creating my own film opening I am also going to create a Facebook and Twitter account to distribute information to our fans. 

Here is a case study I created on slide share of the Hunger Games Mocking Jay part 1 and how the film was distributed. 

Click Here

PLANNING:TARGET AUDIENCE

Click here to see the content I created on slideshare.

PLANNING:SHOT LIST

PLANNING: TREATMENT

Film Title : 10 years  

Film title: 10 years

Amberleigh Endora has been been tragically missing for just over 10 years... yet the heartache is still very raw and existing in the lives she made an impact in, with her bedroom untouched and her mother still mourning. PC Luca fully involves himself in the never ending unknown identity of Amberleighs misplacement. Resulting in the loss of his job on the police force because of his inquisitive unanswered questions of the crisis , he still takes it upon himself to discover this enigmatic, unresolved mystery... even if this involves taking it too far. After losing everything (his house, family and dignity) and the harsh reality from an old friend on the force PC Hannaford he still pursues the hunt, wanting a answer. 

Is there anything that makes Amberleigh different and unordinary?

After much persistant research, PC Luca understands that 10 years on Amberleigh Endora is now living an ordinary life of Winter Jones, unknown of her pass and the torturous impact she has left in so many peoples lives. 

After so long, PC Luca realises his obscure obsession of this case may just crush Winters reality and ordinary lifestyle, should she know or should PC Luca finally realise he should allow Winter to pursue living her normal and comprehensive life.

LOCATION RECCE

In todays lesson we searched our school for locations that we could potentially use in our thriller film opening. I took photos of the locations that I thought would work.

Firstly, I looked at the school science labs. We decided we could use the labs so shoot a scene to show the ex police officer doing DNA testing off office hours trying desperately trying to crack the case of the missing girl. 

Secondly, we chose this play area as we thought it would be effective to shoot flashbacks of the young girl. Showing that she lived a completely normal life before she was reported as missing. 

Thirdly, this cornered off door in the sixth form centre we thought would be useful for flashbacks as the red and white tape symbolises a crime scene. 

INITIAL IDEAS

My group and I spent our lesson brain storming our ideas for our film opening. We had previously decided on a stalker/thriller themed opening so we elaborated on these thoughts.

We know have a brief skeleton of our plot. When creating this we soon realised that it would be must easier and much more realistic if our opening was based around a really life event my group and I chose the disappearance of Madeline McCann. We understood that it is a really serious case and of course would adapt it to our own characters and story line but it was a good starting point.

Next my group and I discussed who we wanted to be in it and who out of our family and friends would fit our characters the best.
The out line of our plot is that a young girl who had been missing for years is now being followed by an ex police officer who was previously obsessed with the case.

We next talked about if we had any locations or exciting props between us that would make our opening stand out and we came up with:

• Elizas camper van where the ex police officer lives. That we are going to decorate with newspaper cuttings and photographs. 
• Harvey's little sister, Amberleigh.
• The pub that tammy works. 

THRILLER AUDIENCE RESEARCH

How do brands profile their audiences?
Brands use viewer profiling to distinguish who they are aiming their product. The brands tend to group society for example age groups, gender and hobbies. Today I started making notes on who I think we should be aiming our film opening to. I started by researching by looking at brands that are already on the market and who they aim their product at. 

Firstly I looked at KISS fm:

KISS 100 continues to successfully hit the mark with its young London target audience, reaching more 15-34s than any radio station in London. Every week 1.9 million listeners tune in to the best dance music on offer in London. Rickie, Melvin and Charlie reach 1.5m listeners across the UK and 783,000 listeners in London each week 

KISS is an iconic youth brand, which began life as a pirate station driving the dance and urban revolution. KISS introduced DJ’s like Judge Jules, Danny Rampling, Roger Sanchez, Spoony and Trevor Nelson and never stopped providing that passion, innovation and desire to break new ground, ensuring all the best new artists and DJ’s play their music on KISS with over 40 hours of specialist programming.
KISS showcases Drum & Bass, R&B, Hip Hop, Dance, Garage, Dubstep, Deep House and Nu Disco and are always on the next big sound.  Shortee Blitz and DJ MK, Majestic, DJ EZ, DJ Swerve, DJ Hype, Sinden, WideBoys and DJ Pioneer all represent their music on KISS FM UK and the KISS Fresh channel showcases even more of the hottest and newest tunes with DJs like Ray Fox, Tough Love, DEVoultion etc and the KISSTORY channel provides 24/7 old skool & anthems.


 Secondly I looked at Topshop:

Their product was described as being targeted at 15-30 year old females. Also thought to be 'the latest fashions at affordable prices'. 



Marketing can be defined as: 
‘The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.’ 
This is the task facing the marketing manager who must realize a company cannot serve all the customers in a broad market. The customers are too numerous and diverse in their buying requirements. Instead marketing managers can become market focused by identifying their target market, anticipating their needs and fine tuning products and marketing programs to successfully meet their needs. The Arcadia Groups Ltd is the UK’s largest clothing retailer, with over 2000 outlets. The group comprises seven brand names – namely Topshop, Topman, Evans, Wallis, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and Burton. Each brand targets distinct market segments and many of them operate within leading positions in their respective markets. 

For this exercise we will look closely at the Topshop brand and its focus on the target market: 

Ø 15 – 30 Year old females 
Ø Who like pubbing, clubbing and have a sense of fun 
Ø Driven by a need to be fashionable and trendy 
Ø Like all trend setting magazines 
Ø Should remain loyal customers if the retailer maintains a reputation for being fashionable 

After some further research about finding a target audience I found that these are some of the main points of finding your audience for your band:

• Look at the age and gender of the people who would use your product ( take a survey).
• Find out your consumers income levels, this will make it easier to price your product.
• Notice the status of your target audience ( family,single,children). 

BRAIN STORMING

In Fridays lesson my group and I watched some of the previous years film openings and discussed what we thought was effective, for example, camera angles, sound, miss-en-scene and editing strategies.

Next my group and I went on to brain storm what genre we wanted to do for our film opening and we managed to narrow it down to a stalker/thriller film opening as we really enjoyed how in examples we had watched had used up beat sounds and creepy settings to create a thriller opening.

Furthermore as a group we decided that we wanted to use a fish eye lens in our opening; this involved us to do a lot of thinking to see how we could combine it it into the theme that we wanted to produce. I had the idea that the fish eye lens could represent that a  character is mentally not thinking straight and that as an audience you should be looking through that characters eyes.  

LES BLEUS DE RAMVILLE

I have watched and analysed the opening of Les Bleus de Ramville as research for the film opening that we are going to make. 

In this opening shot, as the audience we experience what it is like to be in the locker room before a game.  It is a mid-shot that dose not show the players face almost creating tension and expressing the pressure that the players have before each game. Finally gives the audience the feeling that they are a fly on the wall in the pre game process making them feel involved. 

 This is a low-shot again still not showing the players face to create  further suspense. Again making the audience feel as tho they are involved with the preparation for the game as they are witnessing even such a simple job as putting on their shoes.  Also the lighting gives a misty feel to it creating the feel of pre match intensity. 

This is a birds eye view angled shot/ high angled shot. The way that the shapes move on the page show the plan and the tactics of the game and it proves to us that although you have to physically prepare for a game you also have to mentally prepare.  The way this sequence has been created was through istop motion (onion cutting)  and I have had previous experience with the method if I were to use it for my final film. 

This is a low angle shot looking up to the middle of the players pre game huddle. This allows the audience to feel as tho they are in the middle of the action for the first time. The lighting is also dark creating shadows under the players faces making the pre game chat feel extremely serious. 

PRELIMINARY EXERCISE

Preliminary Exercise 

TASK: 

My group and I created our preliminary film. 

We devise, film and edit a short exercise in film making which OCR asks us to complete prior to our film opening. We watch examples of the exercise such as those undertaken by Claremont students last year and others like this one.
Here is another example

RESEARCH: ART OF THE TITLE

Today I looked at the title sequence of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as research and inspiration for my film opening.

This films genre is thriller/crime. We can see this from the title sequence as the music is an upbeat fast song with a strong drum beat. This fits well with the fast camera work that consists mainly of panning shots and extreme close ups.

The opening also has a metalic tone as through out the majority of the sequence it is only black and white apart from the use of fire in the middle of the sequence. This creates excitement in the audience as is suddenly derastically  changes from black and white to a bright orange.

Through out the sequence there is a black liquid that is poured over different objects. As black connotes evil and suffering it is seen as blood like and represents death, telling the audience that the film is going to be violent.

Following on with the black and white theme, the font it all consistent and in white. It is very clear to read as it comes up on  a black background.

The mis-en-scene in this opening is dark and misterious as there are flashes of light almost like lightening, with the black liquid covering objects. This makes the audience wonder what is to come in the film as it is not clear at the beginning.

RESEARCH: NOWHERE BOY

The opening shot of the film 'Nowhere Boy' is an establishing shot of a old, stone grand looking building, and we then we see John Lennon running across the front of the building. This shows the audience that John is not very significant as the building makes John look so small. Interestingly the building is old and made stone giving the film a grey dull feel but in contrast there is upbeat jolly music playing. 

Through out the next 15 minuets of the film as the audience we understand that John has a very different relationship with his uncle than he does with his Aunt Mimi. Mimi is represented as the responsible motherly figure where as his Uncle is more of a friend to John. We see this when  Johns Uncle presents him with  a harmonica, the way his Uncle looked over his shoulder to see if Mimi was looking before he gave it to John tells us that music is something that only John and his Uncle share and that it is special to them. Presenting the Uncle in a soft, childish way as he jokes around with John. in contrast Aunt Mimi is stun, traditional and sensible and her character is shown through what she wears. 

Furthermore we see that John is rebellious in this opening as Aunt Mimi has to constantly remind John to put his glasses on, also we see Johns happy, free side when he rides his bike with his friend with no hands on the handle bars. Finally when John arrives at school and is  greeted by some girls at the gate shows that he is popular at school and cheeky.  

DISTRIBUTION: PRIDE

We investigated how the film 'Pride' was attracting their audiences. 

• I started by browsing the official film website, http://www.pridemovie.co.uk The website included a live twitter feed that would tweet regularly important and exciting information about the film to get the audiences exited for the release and give them the opportunity to follow the film.
• The website also included a sound bite of the leading actor Andrew Scott advising people to rush and get their tickets as there is only one week left. By the audiences hearing it from Andrew Scott will create buzz for the film as it shows that the actors are getting involved with spreading the word of the film.
• The LGSM and starts of the film marched with a live band to Odeon Cinema in Camden on Tuesday 2nd September for the Premiere of the film. This created buzz as it is nothing like any other film has done so it makes it original and exciting. They then posted photos and footage of the march on the Pride website to excite fans and persuade them to go and see the film. 
• Backstage footage from the premire was posted on the website so fans and watch it and be inspired to go and see the film.