Here is our final video, a link to see the video in youtube is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2d4Sz_30R8

This is our directors commentary for our video, and a link to the youtube post below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AURu56HXPo

Feedback

We have created a questionnaire for 20 people to fill out after they have viewed our clip. We decided only to question people that were within our target audience to get the most precise information to make the very best film we could. Although our target audience is male young adults and teenagers, we decided to also appeal to the female aged 15-30 demograpic as the results from the questionnaire showed that they enjoyed thriller/horror films. The feedback we got was quite good, with compliments along with with some constructive criticism. We decided that we would use this criticism to improve our film before we finalised it.

Here is one of the questionnaires that was given back from a group sample of 20 people.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The genre of our opening sequence is a psychological thriller, we used lots of ways to show this genre to build up suspense and gain the audiences attention so it is interesting and they want to watch the rest. Firstly, looking at the films target audience of male teenagers and young adults, we were able to select different aspects of the making and editing to suit this. The plot line, camera work, sound, editing and Mise-en-Scene are the different aspects we looked at, which were all extremely important for our film to work, flow and keep the audiences attention. We chose the title of the opening film to be Spiritless which we hope would attract our target audience as it sets the genre of the film. Due to the fact that our film is a psychological thriller, we had to remember that is not suitable for anybody under the age of 15, to both make sure our intended audience could watch the film and to distract people who would find the film disturbing and too frightening. The locations are quite normal, which adds realism to the clip; this can make the strange things happening in the clip look even more dramatic and frightening because the thought of it actually being real can be more terrifying its self. The fact that the main character is walking very suspiciously creates tension which engages the audience as they wonder why he is so suspicious.

We used a point of view shot, where the main character is holding the camera, this was used to show a ghost sitting next to him and then disappears at his second glance. This creates tension as the audience is left wondering what will happen next, and whether it was just his imagination or if it was real. It adds realism to the clip too. The main character is looking out at a beautiful location with glistening water, which juxtapositions to the unfamiliar strange happenings around him.The clip is very mysterious and grabs the audiences attention as they want to understand what is going on, what is the characters relationship with the ghost and what will happen to the main character.

It was quite sunny on the day we filmed, which helped us to film a shot of a shadow following the main character. This adds to the feel that a ghost is following him, which is an aspect that further keeps our audience engaged.

With more luck, it also rained the day before, so we were able to take a shot of the main character stepping into a puddle which is shown to frighten him a little, as he looks around to see if anybody is following him. This shows he is anxious and afraid as he is seen to be very jumpy. This then reflects on the audience too, as they will then feel jumpy too.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our film would be teenagers and young adults. The genre comes under psychological thriller so would contain scenes too distressing for children and younger teens to watch. With this we have decided our film would have the rating of 15, which would allow us still to reach our target audience. At first we thought the rating should be 18, however upon review we decided that that would be too restricting to our audience, and as the film would not contain scenes overly distressing or inappropriate there would be no reason.

Shutter Island's primary reception was in the 20-30 year old age group, and we therefore set that as our target audience too, but allowing teens aswell so we can widen our audience. Shutter island also had the same age rating, 15. we decided it would be mainly males as our protagonist is male and men are typically more prone to watch films with horror and violent aspects, however we did not believe their would be a much less significant amount of interest in females. Psychological thrillers typically appeal to a more niche audience, and therefore we decided the typical nature of a would-be audience member would be to have interests and preferences to mystery, drama and violence. We would therefore advertise this on places such as TV, radio, bus stops and football stadiums.

This is an example of who might come to watch our film. Due to the fact that our main character is quite depressed and deluded and has a hint of "emo" and "goth" in his style of clothing. This would appeal to the "emo crowd" so we would aim to attract people like the teenager pictured. This is Luke, he is 18 years old and lives in Manchester. He dresses quite "emo" and gothic he would therefore shop in places like soho.com for example. He does not shop in high street shops and is not interested in whats in fashion as he has his own unique style. He would defenatly be interested in horror and thriller films and defenatly psychological thrillers - like our film. He is the type of person who likes goorey films and would certanly buy the DVD's of these types of scary films when they come out.

Luke listens to hard rock and metal music like AC/DC and Led Zeppalin, he doesnt necessarily listen to the radio as he has his own individual taste.

Our film would unquestionably enjoy or film, and if it was to be shown on the cinema it would probably appeal to him and he would be one of our viewers, as he likes other films like this such as Unknown and Inception.

What kind of media institution would distribute your product and why?

Two films we looked closely at when planning our opening sequence was shutter island and The butterfly effect, as both are psychological thrillers and both incorporate flashbacks. These films were moth major blockbuster hits, shutter island was produced and distributed jointly by the major Hollywood conglomerates Columbia Pictures and Paramount Pictures, as they are very big companies. However, realistically they wouldn’t distribute our film. We looked into british distribution companies and found two main companies we thought may distribute our film; The first was a company called Hammer film, which has distributed many low-budget horrors and thrillers, ours would fit to their preffered genre and therefore they may be interested. The second is a more well-known british company – Working title. These have produced many well-known films such as Shaun of the dead. Another option would be working title’s subsidary company, working title 2. This may be more appropriate as they deal with lower-budget films, such as ours.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The opening sequence we have created has the genre of psychological thriller. The plot line is based on a young male student who is very spooked about his surroundings, seeming like he is going insane. The idea came from the film's Shutter Island and The Butterfly Effect where the main character is also very spooked, wary and unaware of what is really going on. These are real media products and both their story's have young male's as protagonists. We decided to look further into shutter Island after looking at both of the films, we thought our opening sequence would look better by looking into this film. We decided when we looked at the structure, it was best not to work from it, as it is too long and takes quite a while to get into the story so we decided to start differently. To quickly get the audience engaged and gripped we decided to give more hints behind what is going on the story and added much more things to the film. Therefore, we were able to pack lots more excitement into our 2 minute opening sequence and make our audience want to watch more.

In Shutter Island the main character thinks he is somebody else, it is only revealed later on in the film so we could not have this as the main idea of the film because nobody would know it was a psychological thriller. We still decided to make our main character misunderstood in some way, we decided that we would make him have hallucinations so it seems he is seeing a ghost, the audience however do not know whether these are hallucinations or if he is actually being haunted by a ghost. This keeps the audience involved and gripped.

At the end of our opening film, we how a midshot of the back of the main character swinging on a swing with the swing next to him swinging by it's self. This creates the illusion that there is somebody there, however the audience do not know whether they are just viewing the main characters point of view.

An important prop in our media product is the ketchup we used, without this nobody would know that the secondary character is dead or not, so we decided to spread the ketchup underneath his face to create the illusion that he is bleeding from the brain. To make this even more haunting we decided to do a worms-eye shot, this makes it seem more horrifying and real - more like he is dead.

In one moment of the film opening there is a high angle shot of the main protagonist character Matt walking past after he believed there was some sort of spirit behind him. We edited this in a way which made it look a lot like CCTV camera footage. We did this by adding a timer at the bottom of the shot and adding a black and white filter to the high angle shot. With additional incidental music from the sound bridge we were able to create an interesting creepy shot. This also makes the viewer question Matts sanity and informs them that he is paranoid that someone or something is watching him.

In terms of sound, we we did not know whether to use music or not. The quality of diagetic sound we captured was not very good so this really made us think we needed to add something different over it. We used a piano instrumental type of soundtrack to the video, so it would seem much more haunted.

The mise-en-scene in our media product is very simple, we only really had to look at a few props and we didnt really have to change our characters clothing to their clothing in reality as their characters were very similar to themselves. The locations are very juxtaposing like by the water at Salford Quays, this makes the film and what is going on in the film much more realistic as well as much more scary too as the audience can compare the beautiful scenery to the not so beautiful storyline.