Target audience for thrillers

This poster connotes the film is about the seven deadly sins. The colours and font show danger and it is dark and scratched. It is an over 18 to appeals to a target audience of 18+ and Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are shown on the poster. They are both big name actors and this would attract women to watch the film as they may be attracted to the actors, and men will go as they aspire to be like the actors. It can also appeal to poeple who are interested in religion as the seven deadly sins are famous and known across many cultures so would catch the eye of a lot of poeple. The black and red suggests death and black suggests darkness.

Target audience for Thrillers

This is a film that would target a mainstream audience. You can tell that by the way that Angelina Jolie's name is above the title. Angelina Jolie is a well known A List actress that appeals to a global audience. Men will find her attractive and women aspire to the likes of her. We can tell that this film is a thriller by the tagline and question mark "who is salt?" This signifys that this film may be something about an investigation etc. Also the dark colours suggest that it is a dark film dealing with dark issues. The target audience fr thrillers is mainly 15-24 yr old with a secondary audience of 25-35 yr olds.

What is a Thriller...

Thrillers fundamentally consist of a battle among justice and injustice, a stereotypical battle of “evil” and “good”. They often include one group of people who are the criminals, and the other are trying to stop them or solve something. There are many types of thrillers, here are some examples;

            action thrillers

            spy thrillers

            political thrillers

            military thrillers

            conspiracy thrillers

My personal favourite types of thrillers are psychological thrillers. In psychological thrillers the conflict between the main characters are normally mental or emotional, rather than physical. They can also have many twists to them that keep the story interesting. Thrillers may also leave you with an unanswered question or an undefined conclusion, which keeps the audience thinking about the film and leaves space for the imagination. For example in Shutter Island, it turns out the main character is looking for an escaped mental patient, that turns out to be himself, so he is his own enemy. The ending was also undefined for the audience so there is a lot of debate between people whether he was crazy at the end or not.

 

Moulin Rouge analysis of mise en scene

Moulin Rouge

Obsessed

In this trailer there are many things that signify that it is a psycological thirller. We see a lot of black outs with writing that give hints to the story accompanied by non-diegetic tense music, this keeps the audience interested. The cuts between clips get faster as does the music whcih creates a build up to the climax.

Taken Trailer

I really enjoyed this thriller as it was upbeat and a good story i thought. This trailer starts with non-diegetic, atmospheric music that sets the tone of the movie as we can tell that something bad or scary will happen. There are a lots of quick cuts between scenes which signify that it is an action thriller as it speeds up the pace to make it very fast, showing chaos and disorder.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

For our preliminary task the group i was in filmed in the studio next to the cafeteria which was quite lucky as it was designed for filming. It was a good location for this task as it was very quiet so we could focus and there wasn't any extra sound for the camera to pick up. We had a set already prepared for us and we could also alter the lighting depending on what we wanted which was lucky. I thought i took a very active role in the filming of our preliminary task as i responded to "standby", with "standing-by" and i pressed record and cut, which is an important job that you have to concentrate for otherwise you could miss a piece of action that was vital. I also had input in choosing how the actors set the scene and in directing their movements and voice tones swell. We all took part and had say in the camera shots we chose to do as it was important that the whole group liked the ideas being put forward. 

Lighting

We wanted to have an urgent atmosphere for our film and thought that it should be about something that shouldn't be done, so therefor, a dark, hard lighting would have suited this theme. This would be good as it would cast crisp shadows in the scenery and their facial expressions would also be very clear. This was very effective as the lighting was able to assist the acting and set to help the atmospheres tension and feeling. As the light was straight above it casted, almost, sinister shadows behind the actors although their angry and urgent fares could still be seen very clearly by the camera. 

Filming

To start setting up we set up the tripod on a level that was suitable for a wide angle shot and locked it down so it was safe to attach the video camera. We then attached the camera and "bubbled" it so we didn't get a "wonky" shot. Before filming we made sure the white balance was correct and altered the brightness and focus of our to shot to make sure everything was clear and that what we saw in real life, would be what we saw on the screen. Every time we wanted to move the camera, or get a differently angled shot we would put the tripod down again, move it carefully while holding the camera, and then re-adjust the tripod to a height that suited what we wanted. We would also re-bubble the camera if we wanted it on an angle, and zoom in and re-adjust the focus. We had no lighting equipment besides the lights in the studio which were dimmed, so it was fairly easier to make sure that the lighting equipment wasn't in view of the camera, we did, however, have to make sure that the top of the set and the green screen was out of view or the illusion would have been ruined. The extra shot angles we added were high angle, and low angle shots, and close ups of eyes. We added a high angle facing Holly as she was the stronger presence in the scene so we felt it was appropriate to show status, the low-angle was facing Megan which helped to establish that Megan's character was scared, or under the control, or influence of Holly, and these clearly stated the status and position of each character. We followed the plan that we were given and proceeded to add on some shots of our own as we had extra time. We first had a wide angle shot and filmed the whole thing to establish the set and the situation, and then we continue to film the whole scene in an over-the-shoulder shot of Holly, and within sticking to the 180 degree rule, we filmed the whole thing again but it was an over-the-shoulder shot of Megan. We then filmed the whole scene twice more using close ups of Holly and then Megan. After we finished the compulsory shots we filmed the whole thing again with the high and low angles. While filming all the shots, and especially the over-the-shoulder shots, we were thinking about sticking to the 180 degree rule and managed to follow it for all the shots. Before we would press record, someone would shout "Stand by", which was the signal for everyone to be silent, and the person pressing record would say "Standing by", and then we'd say "turning over", where we pressed record, and then finally "action". When the scene was finished we would wait about 2 seconds until someone said "cut" and then we would press the record button again to stop the camera rolling. When we were completely finished with the project we said "that's a rap!" to classify that it was completely finished and everyone could go. 

I have learnt a lot about practical film making for these media lessons. I learnt about the different types of editing techniques, and camera angles, like high-angles, close-up, shot-reverse-shot, eye-line match etc. I also learnt how to put up a tripod and attach a camera correctly, adjusting the white balance, focus and brightness. Sometimes, what you see through the little camera screen is not what comes up on the tv or computer, so you have to adjust the brightness correctly so you have the correct lighting for the mood. In these media lessons i have also learnt about synchronous music and non-diegetic and diegetic sounds, and how a movie would not be the same without all these aspects compiled together to make the perfect motion picture. 

Preliminary Storyboard

This is our Preliminary storyboard that we had to follow It was very simple and showed us which camera angles we HAD to shoot, although we could add shots if we wanted to. We tried to add in hig and low angles and extreme close ups.