Target Audience Research - Audience profiles

When producing and marketing a film, it is really important to research your target audience. This audience can be responsible for feedback in terms of what the like or dislike about the chosen genre. This enables you to make something made fit to the target audience taking into account the feedback. By observing the chart below which i got from the pearl and dean website, we can see that 39% of the cinema audiences are aged between 15-24, which is within the range of our target audience. Secondly, in the gender collumn, we can see that males and females are almost the same in both the population and cinema audience, this shows that our target audience of males in terms of gender do go to the cinema and make an appropriate target audience.

 From this table of ratings for se7en from the IMDB website. We can clearly see that there is a heavier concentration of male ratings in comparison to females. This also fits in with our target audience as between the ages as of 18 and 29, the males dominated the females in terms of ratings.

BBFC Ratings

After viewing the BBFC website, we have come to a conclusion to rate our thriller as a 15. This means that nobody under he age of 15 can rent or buy media products given a rating of 15.We decided this because it contain scenes of strong violence and unacceptable behaviour which we feel may influence the younger generation. Secondly, our film contains strong language such as swearing. Additionally, within the film there are drugs and the use of a kitchen knife as a weapon for murder. We feel that young children may be very frightened of this and also may possibly try to imitate the behaviour i.e using a knife as a weapon or replicate the swearing used in this film. On the other hand, the audience ages 15 and over are more mature and know not to be influenced by the violence or the strong language portrayed in the film.

Ou thriller opening pitch

thriller opening pitch on Prezi

Narrative Research

The narrative of a film is generalised these days by simply saying it has a begining, a middle and an end. Howver, there are more stages of films have been stated in more detail. The basis stages are:

• Exposition - This gives us the simple introduction to the story 
• Disruption - Here there is an obstacle, in the story
• Climax - At this point there is a turning point
• Resolution - Everything is restord and there is balance once again.

 Todorov's theory of narrative is made up of five stages, this conists of the following:

• The equilibrium is the point where characters are introduced (major and minor) and the story commences.
• Disruption- The antagonist(s) would be introducedand the story starts to divert slightly.
• Recognition- The disruption has been recognised. The effects of the disruption start to take place mainly on characters.
• Attempt to repair- At this stage, the disruption is repaired and resolved.This i would say is the peak of the film.
• New equilibrium- Here, the diruption is gone and effects of it have eased away. There story usually ends on a high note. 

Roland Barth sayd that all narratives share structural features that are brought together in different ways. Even though there are differenenes between individual narratives, they all have a limited number of organisational structures that affect our reading of the text. These are called narrative codes.

• Enigma Code - A narrative device that teases the audience with a puzzle or riddel
• Action Code - Events we know that will be significant in the development of the narrative.   

On the other hand, Vladimir Propp also concluded that all the characters could be resolved into 8 character types:

1. The villain  - Who struggles against the hero.
2. The dispatcher  - The character who makes the weakness known and sends the hero off.
3. The (magical) helper  -  helps the hero in the quest.
4. The princess or prize  - the hero deserves her throughout the story but cant to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is mostly ended when he marries the princess,also beating the villain.
5. Her father  -  gives the task to the hero, shows the false hero, marries the hero.
6. The donor  - prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object to help him.
7. The hero or victim/seeker hero  -  reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
8. False hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

Lastly, when looking at Claude Levi Strauss, he studied hundreds of myths and legends from around the world. He stated that we make sense of the world, people and events by seeing and using binary opposites. He observed that all narratives are organised around the conflict between binary opposites such as:

• Good vs Evil
• Boy vs Girl
• Humanity vs Technology

Todorov's Equilibrium and Disequilibrium Model

Above, i have written down the different stages of the Todorov narrative structure for two films, Star wars and Se7en.

Narrative Notes

This image on the left shows the notes we wrote on narrative in the lesson. It consists of a basic narrative format, todorov's narrative format. Secondly, i have wrote out the different stages of the narrative for little red riding hood using todorov's method. Moreover, i mention Roland Barthes and his enigma and action codes. To conclude, i stated different ways in which the narrative can be manipulated.

Inspirations

Just as i have i have mentioned in previous posts, this shot from se7en is the most inspirational shot i have found. This is becuase we are shooting a crime thirller and we want the room we are going to film in to be scary and gloomy like this. The room is in a mess, it is very well lit in terms of making it scary. Whats really good about this shot is that it is dark and the light pretuding from the window and also given off from the lamp. This is something we are actually going to employ into our film. This use of light focuses the audience on that part of the room.

I have noticed that in Thriller films the shot composition is very important  as it can add mystery to certain characters or objects.The mystery aspect in thriller is very important as it keeps the audience guessing on whats going to happen, and also builds up tension within the scene. This is inspirational to me becuase in our film the antagonist  does certain things which builds up a mysterious element within our opening sequence.

The use of Focus as a camera technique is important and significant in a Thriller as it can add to the mystery and suspense of a certain scene. Here we see the of lack of focus has hidden the identity of the character, this adds to the intensity of the scene as we dont know who he is and what he is doing. This technique is going to be key in our film as we do not want to reveal our antagonists face so this shot will do exactly that.

The camera technique of close ups and using zoom is used commonly in Thriller films. By showing a close up of a person, object or place. At this moment the audience is in thought as they are wandering what this is and what links/significance it has in the film. Here we see in Se7en a close up of a person slicing the tips off  their fingertips. This is creepy and the audience wonders why is he doing this.

Uk film production comapany research

Hammer Film Productions:

Hammer films was created in 1934 by theatre entrepreneur and actor William Hinds (stage name Will Hammer) and Spanish born Enrique Carreras owner of film distribution company Exclusive Films.Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies – and in later years, television series. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was due, in part, to distribution partnerships with major United States studios, such as Warner Bros. It was the only British company with a guarantee of US distribution and in 1968 it picked up the Queen's Award for Industry for its success in bringing in American dollars.

Thrillers:

Alongside production of the Gothic horror films, this company also made a series of what were known as "mini-Hitchcocks." These very low-budget  thrillers, often in black-and-white, were made often compared to the later Psycho. This series of mystery thrillers, which all had twist endings, started with Taste of Fear (1961) and continued with Maniac (1963), Paranoiac (1963), Nightmare (1964), Hysteria (1965), Fanatic (1965), The Nanny (1965), Crescendo (1970), Straight on Till Morning (1972) and Fear in the Night (1972).

Thriller opening analysis - Hannibal

The opening starts with a non diegetic soundtrack. This soundtrack is very echoy and and gloomy. After while the soundtrack is still playing, a male voice is speaking over it. This gives a slight indication that perhaps that this particular scene could be a flashback of something that happened prior to the actual storyline, the visual at this time is just a black screen, this shows that this could be a serious moment and the director/producer wants us not to focus on the visual but draw our attension to the audio of this scene.The soundtrack now is a slow piano, this sounds very calm and relaxing in contrast to the opening soundtrack.

The camera then zooms slowly into a shot of what seems to be a semi lit posh like room with shiny glass tables and desinger lamps. When we observe the lighing here in this scene, we see the man sitting on the seat to the right has little light shining on him and if we look to the left, we see two men, one disabled in a wheel chair and a man standing up dressing in a suit. The light shining on the two men on the left is considerably more than the man on the right. This provides the hint to me that the character on the right maybe a protagonist or someone that the audience should keep a watchfull eye on.

Then while the two men are having a conversation, the camera shows a close up of the face of the man in the wheelchair. This portrail of him is that of something you would also see in a horror movie, this imediately has an impact on the audience as they get a slight shock and feel slightly scared just by this image. The audience's predictions have now changed as now this character with a deformed face now maybe be the actual protagonist. This can be supported by the very dark background of the image, only little light is showing his face, also his scars and deformation of his face clearly conveys that he might be the protagonist.

Overall, the camera work, soundtrack and most significantly the lighting has given a excellant insight to this film and has conveyed its point effectively. This opening has left the audience in deep thought as they are thinking, what happened to this man?, what/who caused the deformation of his face? The director/producer have engaged the audience and left them in thought