CHHH CHH CH CHANGESssss...

Well we thought we were done, complete, finished! BUT, we changed the film opening a little, we found out that the music wasnt allowed as it was breaking copy right laws and this was obviously a problem! We used garage band and made a whole new track from scratch which actually sounds better than the music we were originally using!
We also added in an extra bit just before becky and charleys scene! it is a black screen with a title fading in saying 'one year later' this gives the film a better sense of a story and antually is much more understandable as a film opening. it makes the audience want to see more and this is very important as if the opening is rubish then the audience wont want to watch the rest.
But now we really are DONE!

What have I learned overall?

Compared to our preliminary task this film has taught us the importance of time management and team work, our preliminary task was shocking! Even though the preliminary task was pretty bad it did teach us the simple filming techniques and the camera shots and angles that looked good and the ones that didn’t work so well!
04:00 has many different camera angles and sound effects within the film. We have around found different transitions and we have audio tracking, time codes and more characters and locations than the preliminary task we did. If you watch the preliminary task and then watch the film you will see the difference in the two and how much we have progressed and learned along the way. If we were asked to do the preliminary task again we would be much more capable and would be able to create a much more detailed and thorough video!
Obviously there are things we would like to change about our final film opening such as, the soundtrack which is on loop but compared to the preliminary task it is amazing. Me and my group are all really pleased with our efforts and we are all really proud of the final product.

What have you learned about technology's from the process of creating this product?

We have learned that there is a lot more to film making than meets the eye. We had to go through the whole experience of filming editing and getting feedback from our target audience. We were pretty good at the filming aspect of the film but when it came to editing it would be fair to say we had our fair share of problems! Adobe premiere pro was really hard to get to grips with but after a while we did get the hang of it!
Charley did really well in making the soundtrack for the film and she will probably talk about how complicated it was to cut and make sound really good.
At the beginning we didn’t actually realise that it would take so much time to edit and put together! We really didn’t realise that the editing process was so laborious and complicated! I think that we have done really well in the making of this film even though the journey hasn’t been perfect.

Audience

Our target audience is 16 to 26 year olds, we knew this from a survey we did which is further down on the blog. We chose these people as they would be the type of age group that would want to watch the film but would e genuinely entertained by it! This audience are the type that will enjoy being scared and watching thrillers. They will also like to go and see it with their friends!
We attracted our audience by posting our film introduction onto youtube, posting links to it onto social networking sites like twitter and facebook. This gives thousands of people all over the world a chance to watch our film and feedback and comment on it. This is good for us as we can see what people really like about it and things we could do to improve it! We also got friends to watch the film and tell us what they thought this is good as they all liked it and told their friends to watch it on youtube.
Within ten minutes of Charley posting the link to youtube on her twitter we had a response from somebody asking if they could see the rest of the film! This is a really good example of our target audience wanting to see the rest of the film and it is good for us as it shows we did it right!

Distribution Ideas

If our film where chosen to be distributed it would most probably be the independent companies that would do this as our film is not a big budget block buster! And it is a little thriller set in Bristol which would not appeal to the huge companies which distribute to the mainstream cinemas. Companies like Warner Bros and Universal Vivendi are not the type of companies that we are aiming to appeal to! But we could appeal to Steal Mill Pictures as they are a small film company which also produced London to Brighton when it was shown at a film festival!
As we have no budget we would probably be able to get our film seen on you tube, and on the internet. We would be able to get anybody in the world to view our film and let us know what they think and if they like it, this is also another advantage as our film could be seen by a distribution company and they could support our film with money, and get it put onto a DVD !

Representing social groups

Our film represents white women, we have a blonde victim who shows vulnerability and victimisation, this is a common representation of blondes and why we used a blonde girl for our first victim. The blonde will die and this will be another common convention in the thriller genre.
Our second victim will be a brunette, the common representation of brunettes is gutsy, a little ‘tom boyish’ and strong, this is exactly why we used a brunette actress for the second victim as it would be conforming to the common representation of brunette girls and also good for the conventions of a thriller! Our brunette victim will be the fighter, the survivor the one the audience are willing to survive and make it through to the end of the film!
We also have an ‘invisible’ character (the stalker) it is obvious that this person is going to be the ‘antagonist’ of the film. This character is the one that has captured and killed the blonder girl. The only small sign of this character in the start of the film is the door opening and slamming shut off camera. This is indicated by a sound effect and the on screen reaction of the blonde girl!

Using, Developing and Challenging Conventions

My film genre is a thriller and me and my group (Abbie and Charley) have tried to incorporate all the major conventions of this genre.
We have used the typical convention with the victim being a blonde girl who ends up dying and the second victim of the film is a brunette who actually manages to survive the crazed killer! We have also used flashbacks which appear right at the start of the film in black and white and with a slight faded quality to them. We are also using cliff hangers and opening up a lot of enigma codes right at the start of the film, this is typical of a psychological thriller as it makes the audience want to watch more and really think about what is going to happen.
We challenged the typical stereotypes of a thriller by using a song at the start of the film with the lyrics explaining what was going through the character on
the screens head, this is challenging the stereotype as it is rarely/never used in a thriller! It is really effective in our film as it makes the audience really sit and watch the flashbacks and connect with the song and what is happening on screen! We where also going to take a big chance and use a voice over instead of song lyrics, this would have been like the voice over of ‘Bella’ in ‘Twighlight’ the point of it would have been for the main character (featured on screen at the start during her flashbacks) would be talking and explaining what is happening in a really cryptic way, this would open up enigma codes and make the audience really listen and want to watch more and more of the film.