Intended Target Audiance

What is Your Intended target audience? 

What age (remember it should be within 3-4 years, and reflect your certificate)?

18 to 22 years old was the initial target, as the Thriller contains a few adult themes, violence and gore, which would not be suitable to the likes of most under the Age of 18, however we would still believe that the film itself would be rated bbfc 15, because though our target audience would be 18-22, the content is still suitable for the 15 and up age demographic, and we would expect them to be abel to view the material.

What gender?

We didn't consider gender in the target audience, but when doing research we found that the majority of viewers were female, so that is what we would expect.

What will they be like and be into?

With This I am taking into consideration the institution who would make our thriller, which maintains an audience by producing weekly content, as well as the less frequent, longer lasting content like their Internet series. The audience is made up of independent amateur film makers who are interested in learning more about editing sand film making techniques, and usually enjoy all of the content they put on the internet.

If we are talking more specifically to thrillers, then the audience woulds most likely be into mild violence and mystery, action and crime, all of the attributes that are part of the over all thriller.

How you will attract them?

Why would they like your film?

As the film involves certain conventions similar to that of Crime thrillers, they would be attracted by the same vibe that comes from Tv shows like Sherlock and the CSI franchise. The suspense and mystery is all part of the experience of our thriller, and holding the audience to the very end, for  a climactic and revelling ending, which you wont get from the rest of the plot.

How will you attract them within the first 2 mins?

The death of the Cyclist and the story of the killer, as it isn't very explanatory, they will want to find out more, and to do that they will have to watch the rest of the plot before they find out.

The Opening Sequence Story Board

Edting

In the editing process we discovered that a lot of footage needed dubbing with diegetic sound from other footage filmed on the day, as a some of the footage, involved either are actor in the barbed wire trap miming or being interrupted by our suppressing media teacher giving us some pointers on the set. and we ended up with 47 seconds of footage, with dubbed sound that didn't repeated itself, as a lot of the dialogue was of the Victim in the trap saying words like “God, Please Help” and “Someone help me” over and over again, we had to listen very carefully and spread the useable audio of the the entire useable 47 seconds of cut footage we put together.

During this process, we also had to match the diegetic dialogue with the footage very carefully, when the actor resembled a dialogue pattern, we matched up the recorded sound with the cut footage. When his face wasn’t shown, this was much easier, as we could put whatever dialogue that we wanted, without worrying about dubbing. 

We decided that a feeling of suspense would be made if the transitions from shot to shot, were straight cuts, and one after another in very short spaces of time. This editing technique created a feel of fear that would connect the audience to the actor, and gave the sequence pace and tension, that would not have been felt if there were less cuts and the clips between cuts had been longer.

An issue we faced at the end of the editing process in Special effects, using Adobe after effects, was that, when our actor playing the victim gets shot, his reaction time is delayed, with the killer on one side and the victim in the trap on the other side of the shot, we decided to split it down the middle and take a a number of frames out of the victims half of the cut, to match the reaction time, and then as everything on either side of the cut moved at different speeds, we had to blend them all together using tracking tools, to make it seem like it was one clip. As the shot itself moves quite fast after he is shot, the audience won notice the very small errors in the clip.

The same techniques were used for the VFX blood animated squib that comes out of the victim being shot, we tracked a point on his body, matched the rotations as he fell backwards and layers blood squib moved with the track we made. 

The Actors

As i said in the previous post, the actor playing our killer, a very specifically cast roll, dropped out last minute, meaning that we had to go with out second best choice, who was very much the opposite of the first choice.  A red head, who was taller, older looking and much more mature in her posture, this was thought to be a problem for the group, but her acting was spot on, and she gave off a vibe that was prefect and exactly what we would expect from the killer if she was real.

Our actor playing the victim, was a much older man, bald and skinny, was actually an amateur cyclist, so practically was prefect for the role. When on set we faced the costume problem, when not filming he got very cold, stationary and trapped under a metal frame bike, wasn't the warmest of places to be, but the wind chill and his position was to our advantage, because it made him shiver, giving us some from of method acting, our actor looked much more scared and in pain than he would have done if he were warmer. This was not to his advantage obviously. 

The Props and costume for Our Victim

The Props and Costume for our victim, however didn’t change, he was still a cyclist and all of his props and costume here on hand as planned, a problem we had was that our actor was trapped under bike and wearing one layer of lycra in chilly 4 degrees centigrade conditions, when we weren't filming it became quite uncomfortable for him.

The barbed bear tap, ended up being a large and messy coil of prop barbed wire, strewn across the cycle path, with the cyclist and the bike trapped in it, our actor tangled in the mess.

The bear trap was an impossible prop to get hold of, and it didn't quite work for the story anyway, the simpler back up option once again, worked out better that the first option 

The Props and costume for the Killer

Props

For the day of a the shoot, a few complications had forced to change some of the props and costume, however all of the changes worked alongside our bicycle bear trap idea. 

When getting the Shotgun from props, i was told that it wasn't available and we had to go with a second best, which ended up being a GBB ( Gas Blow Back ) AirSoft Handgun, which, during its appearances, made the opening sequence more realistic, GBBs look and operate like their real steel counterparts, so it was the closest thing we could get to a real firearm.

Costume changed slightly when our female actor pulled out at the last minute, as the costume would only fit her, we again had to go for second best, instead of a coat, it was overalls, and there was no peek cap like we originally discussed in the group. This wasn't a problem however, and in hind sight the group agree that it was an improvement on the cliche farmer outfit we chose for our 1st actor.

Organising Props and Costume

We obtained our props and costume from different sources, most came from our group and our actors. 

The bike and cyclist lycra, came from our victim actor, and overalls came from a killer, the prop gun, the killers checked shirt, and the some of the barbed wire, came from our group. And finally the fake blood, barbed wire and one of the handguns came from the schools props department. 

Most of the choices for props and costume were second choice due to unforeseen circumstances, and turned out to be better than the first choice we would have gone with.

Logistics and transportation of props was hassle free, all of the props could be carried either under arm or in a small bag to location, and the bike was ridden by our actor, this also put him in the riding mood, instead of acting like he had been cycling.

Location, Problems and Solving them

Our Final location choice ended up being on school campus, a last minute decision by our supervising teacher, because it was a much more logistically sound, we wouldn't need transport or need to waste too much time getting to and from location, and we were close if we needed anything, SD cards, lenses, or if we needed a break or someone got hurt, it would be easy to get back to school. 

The location was a path in a secluded wooded area at the back of our campus, or so it seemed, we walked further up the path we found small, yet old 19th century structures, which we used to film our introduction to the killer, or at first ‘saviour’ of the cyclist. 

The only problem  that we faced on location was that we were right by a road, which at times wasn't very quiet, horse riders and van often drove by, he had to both film at the right time, and not attract the attention of people when our victim loudly shouted for help. 

Props and Costume, logistics and Precautions

When talking about Clothing and the props like the bike, there are very few problems that face the group it terms of obtaining or filming, the cast or crew were happy to provide most of the costume, things like the Cyclist lycra and helmet were a little harder to get hold of, but all that we needed was available to us.

The bike has presented the group with the problem of logistics, getting the bike to our location from school may be a problem, we though that about shooting in a wooded area in school grounds, but most of the landscape looks to man made, and we wanted to have a location that looked untouched and secluded, so we have had to seek further afield, and away from school. So we will have to organise transport for the bike.

Two props that we have problems with is our prop firearm, the murder weapon, and our barbed wire bear trap. The UK has very strict laws on the use of guns or replica firearms in public places, or in the view of the public, this is under the Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006. In order to own a replica firearm which is non colours (two-tone) we either have to own an Air-softing UKARA license or be a registered film company or reenactors. School solves that problem by having a license to film with replicas, but when filming we still have to let the public know that we are filming and using props, and that a man isn't really caught in a trap.




Taking precautions like, putting up signs, wearing high-vis jackets and vests, will make people think twice before they call the police. This is meant to be the fun part of our course work but its not worth getting the police called on us because the general public thought we were using real guns and that someone was actually hurt.

The Opening Sequence and mise-n-scene in our thriller

Opening Sequence Mise-en-Scene