Risk Assessment.

This is our risk assessment sheet. We had to complete this showing all the potential risks that could have happened during our film. This could range from Arjun falling down the stairs, or the house catching fire whilst burning the toast. We had to choose whether the risk was 'Low, Medium or High' depending on the chances of this occuring.

Evaluation Q7

Looking back at the preliminary task it is easy to see that I have come forward and improved my knowledge at the production, filming and editing of film considerably. Even to the point of story-boarding and looking at what shots go well with each other, I have discovered that filming is much more complex than just taking a camera out and pressing record. You have to plan your time and everything you do within the film otherwise nothing will come together. We had a much longer time to plan, shoot and edit our final film, so naturally it was going to improve, but if we had not done our preliminary sequence to find out what could go wrong and how to solve it, I don't think we would have been so well equipped making the final draft. For our preliminary sequence we did have a set of storyboards but these were not as well laid out our final piece. We also had more time to look for props, costumes and locations for the final piece whereas in our preliminary sequence we all were in our school clothes, and just searched for a free room around school. The editing was made easier in the final draft, as we had a long time to decide what we wanted to cut out and sort out jump cuts, we even had the chance to re-shoot some of our final sequence as we thought that we could make it better. We also benefited from being able to use GarageBand to put a non-diegetic sound into our final draft. To summarize I think that we have been able to improve our standard of filming and editing dramatically over the time we have been producing this film and I have learned the key apsects of Planning, Shooting and Editing a film.

Evaluation Q6

During the planning, production and editing of our sequence, the whole group had to start using new equipment and technology. We had the luck of being able to use an Apple Mac to edit our film. None of us had used Apple Mac's before as we all have Windows Vista installed on our computers. Although this was a change, it was fairly simple to pick up with the new outlook of the computers and all the programs we had to use. We used three main programs when producing and editing our film, these included Final Cut Express (click here to show a tutorial of how to use the program), we also used LiveType, this program was used for us to create the credits in the film. You can choose from a database of fonts and livetexts to use as samples to design the font and background you wanted. This was probably the hardest program to get hold of and understand what the different navigations did, but it was possible to do so and we were happy with our final credits. I was limited to camera work as another member in our group done most of the camera, but I did get a good understanding, of camera shots and movement from what shots I did film. We decided to include parallel shooting in our film to allow the audience to know about the Killer before the victim Adam did. This was hard at first, but after thinking about how we were going to tackle the problem, we completed it quite comfortably. We also filmed during the night and the day, and we also had to reshoot some shots, so to try and keep continuity with shooting at slightly different times of the day was hard, but we tried our best with the lighting. With final cut on the Apple Mac's we had to edit anything that went wrong in our film, this included jump cuts and anything that we felt was not needed in the film. This program helped us out on more than one occasion when it came to jump cuts, as we had a few in our first draft, that we were able to get rid of for the final piece. The last piece of software we used was called garage band and this was to create a non-diegetic sound that was going to be played in the background of our film during a certain time to represent a feeling of sadness and emotion. We were lucky to find a great sample track off the program that we could import straight into our film so we didnt have to go through all of the controls and configure our own track. The only time we used software we were all experienced with was the use of Microsoft Excel, where we created our Questionnaire, and also our graphs to show our results.

GarageBand tutorial - click to view

LiveType tutorial - click to view, this shows a few videos of how to use LiveType

Evaluation Q5

To attract our audience, we used generic conventions that are typical of thriller films, but we also included some factors of psychological horror. This includes Adam being murdered in the scene, diegetic sound that represents the feeling we are trying to give to the audience. During the sequence we use fast cuts, and we have purposely filmed at different times of the day, including shots at night time to draw attention to the tension we are building. This is one of the ways we are trying to grab the audience. We have also decided on the main actors in the film all being Males, and all being youthful. As our main audience is 15 - 35 year old males, we thought the audience could relate to the character types in the film. We hope this will make the audience more involved. We used fast cuts specifically when ashley was being chased by Arjun. Not only is this typical of a thriller to include fast cuts, it also helped build up the tension. We also used hermaneutic coding which we had learned previously about that are widely used in horror and thriller films, some examples of this include us not showing the killers (Ashley) face throughout the film, we also didn't show what actually happens to Adam (victim) and we don't show the audience what Ashley has actually taken. This makes them want to watch more to find out what has happened.

Evaluation Q4

From doing research previously, where each member in our team looked into a film to see who the film appealed too and what people of different classes, ages and genders wanted to watch. We conducted a questionnaire to see if we could find any pattern in what people wanted to watch.

This is our questionnaire results.

From the results we were able to tell that our film would appeal to young males aged 15 - 35. This had an effect on our film being classed as a 15 as we didn't want to lose any audience. We researched further into this to try and justify the results by looking at some other films in the same genre and this is what we found.


This backs up our questionnaire results, and shows that thrillers are appealing to young males across the world.

Too see any more films on the Pearl and Dean website you can find them here

Evaluation Q3

After looking at other films in the same genre as our final film. We have decided that it could appeal not only to small independent companies, but it could also be produced by a worldwide filming company that could make use of its specialties in each aspect of film. As our final draft is filmed mainly inside a small house, the costs wouldn't be too much to handle, and the general aspect of our film being a thriller, with psychological horror generic codes embedded in the scenes, we won't be needing special effects. The main cost would be for the actors and any other luxuries that the company would want if affordable. Sony Pictures could quite well produce our film, but on the other hand so could a smaller company such as Lionsgate films, who have worked with other films such as the SAW series and American Psycho. Depending on who would release our film would change what would happen with prints and advertising. If we did release our film with Sony, then there would be a massive push in our advertisements, and we would base this to a mainstream audience, but also from looking at our research, we understand that our film is most probably going to appeal to young males, aged between 15 - 35. We will do this by maybe putting adverts in magazines, on TV and in the newspapers. If we did however go with Lionsgate, we would have to think much more carefully about where we would put out our advertising scheme. But we have the relative research to work out that it has to appeal to young males and from this we could work out where to spend the small budget we have.

Lionsgate Films - Click here to visit Lionsgate Films website

Sony Pictures - This links you to Sony Pictures if you'd like to browse their website.

Evaluation Q2

Our film was originally going to be featuring two males and a female. With the female being killed off, but due to some problems in the production of the film, we had to revert to using three males. I think that we gave males a balanced representation overall, showing that youthful males can be successful, but on the other hand our killer is a youthful male. Dressed in a stereotypical way. Our film shows Arjun not being able to cope with housework and trying to look after his child. He is waiting to go to work and his character is based on a typical guy that is making a living to support his family. There is a negative representation of the male character Arjun is playing as he is easily targeted by the murderer as he is not looking after his child responsably. We have tried to compensate for this with the music that we play just before which is representing a sad feeling and sorrow feeling towards Arjun. This is inserted in the film to make the audience feel sorry for Arjuns character rather than think that he deserves what he gets. We have various camera shots showing the murderer entering the house and this shows a negative representation of males. Showing his costume and the way he breaks into the house. We see that he has planned this as he uses the same window to break in the second time, it is shown negatively as he kills Adam's character for no apparent reason. To complete how negatively we are representing the killer, he speeds off in a car away from Arjun showing no remorse for what he has done.

Evaluation Q1

In our opening sequence to the film ‘Targeted’, we have used media conventions that are typical of most horror films. We have constructed our characters profiles as well as we could to make the murderer appear sinful and realistic. His costume is used to show his youth and also brings a sense of intimidation. The other characters in this film are constructed stereotypically to their age and value. Arjun appears as a young man in a high-end job that is struggling to keep up with everything in his life. The other character in the film is Arjun’s friend. We have constructed him to wear clothes that are typically what a youth would wear. He is well spoken and we use the phone call to show this. Arjun and Adam are both likeable people, which is typical of a horror film to get the audience emotionally involved. The setting we used was convenient and worked with what we were trying to do. We needed a narrow house that had an exit point for the murderer. The sound in our film comes from mainly diegetic sounds form the TV that Arjun is watching in one of the scenes; there is also some dialogue in the sequence that is made up of a phone call. But the main sound that we had a choice about was the theme that we created on GarageBand. This we felt was perfect to bring across the feeling we wanted to give the audience. We have created a slow tempo piece that we use whilst the credits are rolling. This carries through until a shot of a photo showing the close relationship between Adam and Arjun.