Audience theories appropriate to our Thriller (Mass vs Niche & Uses and Grarifications)

Our thriller will appeal to a much more niche audience as opposed to a mass audience. This is because our particular genre is something that appeals to only a specific audience who are interested in the themes brought forward. For example corrupt governments and conspiracies. This makes the Mass vs. Niche audience theory applicable to our thriller..

Our thriller also relates to Blulmer and Katz's 'Uses and Gratifications' theory. This is because the audience can use our opening in several different ways. for example, our audience may use our thriller for diversion and may want to escape from their everyday lives and look into the potential future mentioned in the thriller.

 

This will allow us to plan to use open and modern locations that still look as though the thriller is set in the present to give the audience the impression that the near future is not too different from today. This makes it easier for the audience to escape into the world that we have created.

Audience Expectations of the Thriller Genre

Audiences tend to watch thrillers for their highly intense storylines and their gripping action sequences. This is reflected through the average age of people that enjoy watching thrillers is around 18-25 as these much more mature ages can fully grasp the often complex themes often raised by the genre as well as appreciate the mature content involved.

However, the various sub-genres of thriller films can appeal to a much wider audience. For example, one of the more popular, thriller sub-genres, the action thriller, appeals to a much wider, audience. Younger people around the age of 15 may be drawn to this particular sub-genre due to its fast paced edits and camera angles typically used throughout.

Distribution of film research

My research into the distribution of films has helped me understand a lot more about how films are released.

When a film is being produced, there are always people who work out how and when the film should be released to the public. These people are the film distributors. Their job is to determine a marketing strategy, the media by which a film is to be exhibited and may set the release date etc.

The film can be exhibited to the public through many different ways. For example, a cinema or movie theater, where someone will pay for a single viewing of the film (often prior to its release on other types of media.)
Television, where different network stations may purchase the rights to show the film to the public on one of their channels.
Personal home viewing, this includes releases on DVD, Blu-ray disc, download etc. And also includes streaming sites such as Netflix, LoveFilm and Blinkbox where the viewer can own their own copy of the film permanently or have inlimited access to it by subscribing to streaming sites for as long as it remains up.

Marketing and promotion of films

I have started to research the various ways in which film studios and production companies promote their products (films, tv shows etc.) The knowledge I have gained will help us when we come to promoting our thriller when it is complete. It can also help by possibly allowing us to further think about our target audience while we are still shooting and open us up to a wider potential audience.

There are several different methods involved in the marketing and promotion of films. These include advertising campaigns, press releases and other methods including those involved in the production of the film/ tv show. Interviews with the actors, directors and producers for example.

In the early stages of release, production companies will invest a lot of money in marketing campaigns in order to maximise their revenue. Around half of the production budget is spent on marketing which highlights how important it is.

Other ways in which different companies promote their films are through film posters seen at cinemas and sometimes in city streets which advertise the films to any movie-goers that happen to be in the area. Trailers are a vital way to advertise films and are the most popular and most effective way to get a film recognised. These trailers show short clips taken from throughout the film and are used to persuade the viewing audience to go and see the new film. Trailers are very common in cinema and are shown just before the film they are about to watch.

Storyboard

We have created a storyboard to roughly show the plot and direction of our thriller opening. This includes camera shots/ angles, directions and actions for our actors and the order in which each shot will take place (as a lot of our scenes are in a slightly random order on the sheet)

Regulated Industry

All modern films are regulated by classification through age ratings. In Britain, this is done through the company BBFC in which each film released is given an age range made specific to who it is appropriate for. A children's film would tend to be classified as U or PG whereas something more mature that may include bad language or violence, for example, may be given a classification of a 15 or 18 as it contains concepts unsuitable for children of a younger age. This knowledge has given us the idea of aiming to make our thriller a 15 to allow us to use much more mature themes. The meaning for each age rating is shown below...

Pitching our thriller

In order to fully explain our ideas and who our target audience was, we prepared a one page pitch for our thriller explaining the key themes and ideas and who the film, as a whole, will appeal to. In this pitch we have included a brief story synopsis, audience appeal, visual realisation (which films, if any, have done similar things) and a target audience. Alongside this we included our proposed title and some rough tag lines. We had intended to share the video of me making the pitch. However, the video file was somehow corrupted and we no longer had time to film it again.

Title

Today we have begun storyboarding our thriller and creating a title that suits the plot. We have decided to use the title Mirage as it is a Psychological thriller above all else. We initially thought of calling it Constitutional Mirage but decided it gave the audience the wrong impression of the film itself.

Comparable products

We have decided to model our thriller on the film, 'The Evil Dead' and British independent film 'Symptoms.' this Is because both of these films have a woodland setting not dissimilar to the setting we are aiming to use in our thriller. We also looked into the various lighting effects used in both films and analysed how they could be used for a much darker eerie effect. We are now looking into how we could implement these lighting effects into our thriller.

Thriller Location

We have been scouting several locations around the local area that we can film in. We focussed primarily on woodland areas in order to achieve an eerie atmosphere to the thriller overall. The location highlighted below is the path we are focussing on. It is very ideal for us because it is very local to where we live and runs just outside our school, making it accessible during lessons as well as after school.

Disability in the Media

After looking through several articles on the internet I have discovered a lot about when where and how disabilities and disabled actor are used in things such as TV dramas etc.

Firstly, it was after the great war that disabled actors first came onto our screens. After newsreels recorded the rehabilitation of injured servicemen, those who had disabilities began to move into the acting business. a good example of this is disabled actor Douglas Bader who was "Immortalised on the big screen" shortly after the war. It wasn't until 1992 that a disabled actor played a disabled character on British television (on BBC soap Eldorado)

Times have changed significantly overtime as in the 21st century a wide range of disabilities, such as motor neuron disease and Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) to name a few, have been successfully portrayed in several different aspects of the Media. However, a lot of these parts are still played by able-bodied actors leaving little room for disabled actors to really make a name for themselves. (http://www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collections/introduction-bfi-collections/bfi-mediatheques/unlimited-disability-screen)

Many people also believe that women and older people have also been seriously under-represented in the media, a study has shown that the British, small-screen diversity has been far younger and androcentric than the actual population itself. It also showed gaps in the representation of the disabled, ethnic minorities and people of different sexualities. only half of the actual age make up in the country was represented with only 15% of women on major stations being aged 56 and over which, the real percentage being 30%. (http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/16/women-old-disabled-under-represented-television)

I read an article by Nicky Clarke who was praising the work of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant when they were producing 'The Office' she mentioned how they had managed to bring in so much realism that " it took me a minute to realise that it wasn't a documentary." this was not just because of the realistic setting or the Mise-en-scene, but because of the casting as well. She spoke of how they had casted disabled actress Julie Fernandez rather than have an able-bodied person play the role and praised them for being some of the few people that would do such a thing. She even mentioned her own experiences at drama school where they had to mimic disabled people from time to time for a role but believed it "was as incongruous as being asked to black up." She believes that while the representation of disabled people in the media is improving, it is happening too slowly. (http://www.theguardian.com/society/joepublic/2011/sep/22/ricky-gervais-stephen-merchant-disability)

The media do often come under scrutiny however when they represent the disabled because of the ethical issues surrounding it. For example, the language often associated with disabilities can come across as offensive or generally negative. For example words such as, "fool, barmy and struggling" which can make the disabled seem less like 'normal' people. However there are those who manage to perfectly address the issues of disabilities without offending anyone. For example, Stephen Fry created a documentary about manic depression and it's effects on a person and managed to perfectly address the issues without offend people and managed to get enough media attention that the information was spread around a large volume of people who may not have been aware of the issues of depression.

I felt this was relevant in case we decided to portray one of the characters in our thriller as being disabled and learn what an appropriate way of doing this was.

Seven Textual Analysis

Thriller Planning

We have begun planning our thriller opening and have opted for a psychological, political hybrid. This would involve a man (protagonist) who has been experimented on by the government, for reasons that do not become clear in the opening, this information will be conveyed to the audience through the use of flashbacks which will appear frequently throughout. The story follows the protagonist's escape from the facility that was holding him. He begins hallucinating a man chasing him and tries to escape.

Barthes' Narrative Codes

Barthes' Narrative code refers to different aspects of narrative which are vital to telling the story in a piece of media. The different codes in this theory are:

Action code:
This is where the audience will recognise an action code in a media text as it is used to indicate the next logical step. For example in my preliminary task we used the opening of a door to indicate a confrontation or conversation becoming imminent between two characters. Particular for my narrative a very tense and awkward conversation.

The Mystery or Enigma Code:

This code is used to explain the narrative by controlling what and how much information is given to the audience. The audience's attention is grabbed by setting up a problem that needs resolving during the course of the narrative. In my task the identity of the drug dealer remains a mystery until the end where he takes his hood down and deals.

The Semic Code:

This code is about symbolism and the hidden meanings in the piece. For example a knife could symbolise violence. My piece included the use of an old tattered bag which symbolised holding something of importance.

The Cultural Code:

This code refers to the class and social status of the characters and will make sense to an audience of a similar or identical social class. For example we used a hoodie and tattered bag for the dealer to show him as being middle or lower class as it is a general stereotype.

Code of Opposition:

This refers to binary opposites throughout the narrative. For example black vs. white, Male vs. female etc. I did not use this in my preliminary task and it is something I will consider in the future.



Titling work

After exploring the different ways to create titles for a video in after effects I managed to come up with these titles.