Evaluation Question 6

I

IW

Evaluation Question 5

EB

Evaluation Question 4

STOLEN 

Gender: 

F 11

M 10

We attracted both male and females to come and watch the film and received good feedback from both genders. These show positive results as it means that both males and females can relate to the characters. Having both genders watch our film stops bias results as well as helping us expand our target audience.

Age:

0-15 0

15-25  17

25-40  2

40-60  2

Having some people who were over the age of our target audience allowed us to know wether more people would be interested in viewing our film. The results show that we achieved reaching to our target audience of elder teens and early adults as they are the most likely to go to the cinema with their friends.

We decided to make our final product a 15 classification meaning that no-one under 15 years old is allowed to see it at the cinema or to rent the film. This means that the majority of the target audience is able to watch this film. Strong violence and discriminatory language or behaviour is often seen in these. The classification means that you have the ability to include 'strong threat and horror as long as there is no sustained focus on sadistic or sexualised threat'. 

What is your favourite film genre?

Thriller  7

Comedy  7

Romantic  0

Sci-Fi  2

None  1

Crime Drama  1

Spy  1 

Surreal  1

Epic  1

These results suggest the film is hitting the target audience as thriller was one of the most popular genres put down. This allows us to get an idea of how many people would watch the film which is helped by the crossover of crime as well.

What would be your preferred thriller plot?

Murder  8 

Fiction  4

Kidnapping  0

Revenge  2

Psychotic  6

These results suggest that our plot in the film is not as popular as other thriller films as ours central around the girl getting kidnapped. Although, there have previously been popular thrillers showing people being kidnapped and is a regular theme which crops up through out thrillers.

Do you go to the cinema regularly? 

Not at all  1

Sometimes  17

All the time  3

These results are what to be expected due to web 2.0 and on demand access.

Do you prefer watching movies at home or in the cinema? 

Home  10

Cinema  11

This 50/50 split is to be expected.

Would you prefer to see the protagonist as male or female? 

Male  5

Female  7

Don’t mind  9

It's good that the don't mind is so high.

Was the ident realistic?

Yes  18

No  0

Did you understand the opening?

Yes  20

No  1

Did the opening leave you asking questions?

Yes  21

No  0

Would you want to watch the rest of this film? 

Yes  20

No  1

Improvements? 

Louder music 

Shot of man through forest

EB

Evaluation Question 2

AC

Evaluation Question 1

( full screen to see full tags)

1. IDENT - We used the convention of having an ident at the start of our film, as this is what is expected to introduce and start the film.  We did a quite graphic, arty ident which is also conventional of an ident, swell as involving an animation aspect
2. SHOT REVERSE SHOT - We also used the shot reverse shot which is sued a lot in real media products, as we thought this would be a good shot to use as it establishes Maddie, and then shows that she's running, and where she is. It also encapsulates the audience as the point of view shot included in the shot reverse, gives you her perspective and increases the anticipation.
3. ENIGMA - We started our film with a clip of Maddie running through the forest that suddenly stops to go to the titles, which creates an enigma, also by how it suddenly cuts to her in a bedroom.  We chose to do this as we've seen this in many other thrillers, and it gives a snapshot o whats happened to the person without having to go in to much detail, so mystery is created.  So we used this form of a real media product as we really liked the effect it creates in films.  
4. TITLES - Like the ident, we definitely wanted titles in our film including the title 'Stolen' as it was a good way to break up the forest scene and the bedroom scene, and again we have seen this in real media products and the title also gives a hint into what happens to the girl as she is 'stolen'.   It also made our film look more professional and realistic, as you would expect to see titles.
5. ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC - Music is commonly expected in films and although this uses the convention, we decided to challenge the convention some films have of the music building from jolly music to serious as this sometimes makes the antagonist more creepy as the music is so happy.  We decided to go for high drama music from the start of the film to indicate the genre and set the scene.
6. LOW ANGLE SHOT OF MYSTERIOUS NEW CHARACTER - The low angle makes the antagonist look more powerful and this still has an effect even when its just a shot of his car pulling up into the driveway.  The cross cut to the car establishes a new character which slowly explains why the girl is in the bedroom, and if we hadn't done this and used the convention of slowing unveiling new characters, then our film would be very one sided and there would be no progression in the film.
7. REACTION SHOT OF GIRL+ POINT OF VIEW SHOT - Similarly to the establishing shot of the new character, the protagonist, we used a reaction shot of the girl looking shocked at the car.  We saw this composition of shots in our film research and wanted to use it as it slowly unveils the plot without the characters having to say it.  Then we also used a point of view shot as this , similarly to in the forest, creates tension.
8. CONTINUITY - We used continuity when Conor, the protagonist, unlocks the door and enters it as otherwise the shot would stand out and be very noticeable as he could open the door and then unlock that as that doesn't make sense.  This is sort of a convention, but we don't feel like we intentionally used this because we saw it in films, but more because otherwise the film would be messy
9. DARK LIGHTING, FACE OBSCURE - This is a classic convention used in thrillers, as the darkness creates fright and the obscurity of his face, makes him seem more daunting and mysterious.  However we challenged this convention in a sense that we did it subtly, as it was caused by there being dark lighting in the hallway, instead of us using a bright light and a blackout.
10. CREEPILY NORMAL ACTIONS - Although i have seen this in a few thrillers, where the 'murderer' leads a normal life and goes home and makes breakfast for example, it is common in thrillers for the antagonist to be very stereotypically angry and sharpen their knives for example.  But we wanted to challenge this and confuse the audience, so we made the antagonist drive home in an expensive car to a nice spacious house and sit down to watch the cricket, as this means it makes the audience question why he would feel the need to kidnap a girl, and this makes them think of what happens next and keeps them wanting more.
11. DISTRESSED ACTION BY PROTAGONIST - We wanted to create the idea that Maddie had been at this house for quite some time instead of it being a recent kidnapping, but we felt like the protagonist needed to show some signs of distress as it is common in thrillers, for the protagonist to be screaming or cry in, so we mad Maddie get angry and shout, but not in a very intense way which again makes the audience question how many times she has got mad, and how long she's been there.
12. NO VIOLENCE OR WEAPONS USED - A large way we challenged conventions of a thriller, was how we didn't use any weapons or violence, especially towards the protagonist.  We wanted our film to be very realistic, and as we wouldn't be able to do proper gore scenes, with fake blood etc. we thought we should leave that out, but also we chose on purpose to leave it out, and use the enigma of the angry man storming upstairs at the end as this leaves the question of is he/her going to be violent towards each other.

IW

Experimenting with sound

After putting the main part of our film together we were planning on having a boy in our school create a short soundtrack for us which would have been produced specifically for the scene although due to the amount of work he had and the time limit we were under this was not possible.

This meant that I had to look for a copyright free piece of music which would be easy to loop and manipulate to fix our film. These are some of the things I found in the process which we debated over:

(how do I put the sound in?)

After agreeing on one track I was then able to adjust the music making it fit in with the scene and help build more tension.

Storyboard

By creating a storyboard it allowed us to have a vision of the film before we started shooting, enabling all of us to match up ideas and know what types of cuts and angles we wanted. We created two different storyboards as the film and ideas changed due to the equipment and actors we had available. It also let change our ideas and develop them further. Through our time filming we stuck very closely to the storyboard we created as it allowed us to stay on track making the days of filming much quicker. Although, we did take the same shots from different angles which will differ from the original storyboard.

Here is the animated storyboard created, we have used the same time gaps which we wrote from our scene creating a realistic view of what is going on in the scene.

EB