Research: Questionnaire & Results (Ms Gibbings)

Task
My group and i all had to create our own individual questionnaires which would gather information for us on what our target audience wanted to see. The information gathered would then allow us to target their specific needs as we want to make our audience happy while keeping the film conventional.


A Streets Production Questionnaire

Please could you ensure that you take care in completing this questionnaire and can you also answer all questions.
*Place a Tick near your desired answer.

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Are you a Male or Female?

Male            Female

Which Age group are you in?

12-16         17-23         24-29        30+

How many thriller films do you watch in a month?

1-4 hours        5-7        8-10        other

In a thriller films, which content do you see as the most effective?

Cinematography (Camera Angles / movement)

Sound

Lighting

What themes do you think create a thriller?

Mystery       Crime        Psychological        Other 


The above is the questionnaire which i created in order to find out what my audience preferred to see in a thriller. I had to make sure all the questions i asked had some kind of relations to my thriller film as the answers i would receive from it would then allow me to make changes to my film.

Conclusion

I found the questionnaire task very useful as the results i would receive from it would be very beneficial towards my thriller film. This also benefits us as we then get an idea of what our target audience want to see and how we'll give them what they want.

Planning: Character Representation (Ms Gibbings)

Character Representation

The importance of character representation in films is underrated as it is the main factor which allows the audience to not only understand the character but also the kind of narrative the film will follow and the impact the character will have on this. Character representation also allows the audience to build a relationship between themselves and the character.

The Awakening - Main Characters

• Sarah - 35 Years Old
• Frank - 37 Years Old
• Shadow - Mystery Character

Sarah
Sarah is the 35 year old who is loving, caring and beautiful, her role in this film will be Amy's mother and Franks Wife. Sarah is persuaded by her husband to move into a new house but she soon realises that she doesn't like the house as it gives her and Amy a weird feeling. This is in hope that they audience, mainly women will feel emotionally attached to Sarah as they may relate their in real life situations to her.
Costume
Sarah will be wearing casual clothing throughout this film. What I mean by casual clothing is comfortable clothes you'd expect someone to be wearing at home. This is so that it meets the audiences expectations rather than having Sarah wearing going out clothes at home. She will not be wearing any kind of make-up at all.
Body Language
Sarah's body language will be very calm and relaxed although ultimetly the audience will be able to notice the uncertainty in her movement around the house as she is still against the idea of moving to a new home. 
Facial Expression
Sarah's facial expressions are seen to change as the film goes on as during the first scenes when she and her family are standing outside the house, you can easily see she has a bit of uncertainty on her face which indicates who doesn't like the new house.
Her facial expression during the dinner scene allowed the audience to get emotionally connected to her as she plead to her husband that she gets a weird feeling about the house.

Frank
Frank is Amy's father and Sarah's husband. His role in the film is the loving and caring father who moved his family to a new home in search of a new life. Frank although was questioned by his wife about the new move initially thought the new house would of been a great fresh start for his family, but how wrong was he.
Costume
Frank is seen wearing casual home clothing and also a suit which suggest that he works.
Body Language
Franks body language starts to change to a more cautious approach as you get deeper into the film as this is when he starts having encounters with the mystery character.
Facial Expressions
Frank did not show a lot of emotion in his facial expression as he wants to be seen as the man with authority. He was very calm and relaxed at the start of the film but by looking at his face you can see he starts to get startled. Even in an scene at the end where he is seen on the floor shouting, scared out of his wits.

Mystery Shadow
The mystery character is a character which appears in the form of a shadow. This mystery shadow appears to be haunting the house and who ever lives inside it. Weirdly enough, the mystery character only seems to appear when Frank or Sarah are about.
Costume
The mystery character wears dark black clothing as this allows him to be unseen at night when he appears.
Body Language
The mystery character when ever seen is always standing up tall which suggest his authority and dominace and also fearless ness as he is always seen in the dark. It also has a slight limp to the way it walks.
Facial Expressions
There aren't any known facial expressions from the mystery character as it wears a white mask which doesn't allow the audience  or anyone else to see its face.

Conclusion
My Analysis of the characters used in my thriller films has allowed me to have to better understanding of the characters and there single characteristics which stands them out from the other characters.The character representation will also allow my audience to relate themselves to the characters as they may have been put in a similar situation to them.

Planning: Preliminary Task (Ms Begum

Preliminary Task

The preliminary Task is when we are all given the exact camera we will be using for filming our thrillers then we are sent away to film some short scene sequences as a way of building our filming experience and also getting use to the camera.

One of our main task was to learn how to operate and use the camera. This also gave us the opportunity to pick out our camera man as we got the chance to test everybody's filming skills which led us to come to a decision of who we feel would be best recording behind the camera. During the task we also had to experiment with the camera by playing around with different camera techniques which we would potentially use in our own thriller.

Our Preliminary Task Scenario:

In our we just had two people walking with no conversation at all as we only wanted to focus on the different camera angles and movements. We used various different locations in our walking sequence before editing the clips.
In addition, during the preliminary task we also separated the group according to their group roles which meant we all were doing different things. E.g. The Camera operation was recording while the director was giving out the instructions to the group.

Difficulties during preliminary task?

During the preliminary task there was one obstacle we encountered which we found hard to go around and that was the editing. We found this difficult as firstly, it was all our first time editing which made it hard for us we found it hard to get use to the editing programme Final Cut Pro. We also found decision making very difficult as we couldn't decide on which scenes we would put together. However, due to us practicing on the preliminary task we were then able to over come this difficulty as over time the practise allowed us to get use to Final Cut Pro. To overcome our decision making problems we just used different scenes with each other to see which looks best.

In addition, the actual hand-held camera we thought was very difficult to operate at the start due to it shaking however, once we finished our preliminary task we all including our camera operator got use to the hand-held camera which was beneficial as it prepared us for filming our thrillers.

We know know what we need to do in order to make our thriller film conventional and appeal to the audience.

Conclusion

I thought the preliminary task was very useful as it allowed me and my group to prepare ourselves for filming by practicing different scenes. It also allowed us to get involved in our group roles as we all took part and had a contribution towards our preliminary task short sequence. In addtion, i thought that the preliminary task helped the group editor the most as he is now confident when it comes to editing our thriller film due to the practise he has had on the preliminary task.

Planning: Storyboard (Ms Begum)

What is a storyboard?

Story board is a graphical representation of how the your video will look like, scene by scene. Storyboards are made using square boxes which illustrates pictures representing each shot in the sequence.


Storyboards need to contain information about: cinematography, iconography, lighting, actors, sound, narrative, location, duration and Number of shots. Including all of these in a storyboard will make producing the scene a lot easier as the producer can just work with and around the information.

Task

Myself and my group each had to create our very own individual storyboard which would represent how shots. This was done as we wanted to know how many shots we would take, the timings of each shot and which lighting, sound, dialogue and location would be  used etc...
The Pictures Below are my version of the storyboard.

As you can see above the storyboard contains clear images and appropriate micro-elements which we plan on using in our thriller film. We took care into making sure the storyboard was clear and easy to understand as when it comes to filming it will make our lives a lot easier. 

Conclusion

Storyboards are very useful and it benefited my group as it allowed us to organise all our shots so that when it comes to filming we can just get on with it.The Storyboard also ensured that we didn't forget any shots and was able to piece together all our shots according to the storyboard.