How did you attract/address your audience?

The genre of the opening sequence is a dramatic thriller and we used many different ways to show the genre and grab our audience’s attention. Our target audience was young adults both male and female mainly ages at 15-25. We chose the name Pretty Girls Make Graves as the main protagonist is female and we want the audience to be in suspense to weather she will kill someone or not. We could not target our film to anyone under the age of 15 as it had elements of violence and two of the main themes are the drug trade and gun crime as these are both big issues in todays society. Our opening location is on a plane showing the main protagonist alone suggesting that her family and friends have abandoned her. It also suggests that she is independent. That’s when the over voice narration kicks in and explains why she is alone on a plane and reveling that she has been sent to live her dad, which most teenagers can relate to as most families are split nowadays. The next time the audience sees the girl she on a bridge smoking looking upset, making the audience wonder what has happened, as the voice over explains we see flash backs of what seems like a chase scene grabbing the audience’s attention, making them wonder why she is being chased and why she needs to hide. We then see her again looking happier with a boy this is clearly shown as a memory. The idea of teenage shows that the girl has had a normal life (something every teenager can relate to) at some point before her “love” was killed. Our film is also a social realist film as it comfrounts issues that is happing in everyday society today. We also know that social realist films appeal to our audience group, films like Kiduluthood and Bulletboy proved popular with our audience.





Audience Profile.

Age : 18

Gender : Female

Profile: Our main audience would be girls from the ages 15-20 as they are learning independence and we also found out from our audience research that girls prefer romance films and given idea of teenage love, we feel it would appeal to them mostly.We wanted to target it at teenage girls who want to be rebelious which is why our main protagonist smokes because it is one of the main forms of rebellion.

Intrests: Music, films, socializing and love are keen intrests of many teenage girls, also the idea of rebelion is consent throughout our product so our audience would be intrested in law breaking.

Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you think you have learnt from the progression from it to the full task?

During the Preliminary task we learnt how to thoroughly plan our shot lists and storyboards which help is with our pre-production work. It also helped us to easily choose the genre for our thriller, which was a dramatic thriller.

The story line was then discussed. During the preliminary task we learnt what needed to be conveyed through each shot to show that dramatic thriller therefore we used a variation of light and dark locations to show conflicting futures. The locations then needed to be discussed and what we learnt from our preliminary task helped us because we were able to see how effective locations would be and how the mese-en-scene would be portrayed.

We learnt how to fit the character to our films genre comparing to our preliminary task. In our preliminary task we learnt that costume could be an effective instrument to give the product a sense of realism. We had to research our films genre before starting filming in order to know what the conventions are. We found that thrillers are a sub genre for horror.

Learning from our shot list we had to change some scenes that were impractical and didn’t fit with the themes. This was a repetition of what we did in the preliminary task. An example of this is we were going to have the main character meeting during a flash back but we did not find it very effective and it also went more towards a romantic genre rather than a thriller. The majority of our product was filmed outside which is a contrast to the preliminary task since it was only done inside. We took our lighting into great consideration we chose to have our final task predominantly does with natural lighting because it would create a great contrast to the flashbacks because there is very little lighting which gives it a creepy look. We did this because in our preliminary task we used unnatural lighting, which didn’t work very well. During our final task we only used non-diegetic sound and all the sound is post-production, whereas during our preliminary task the sound was all diegetic. During our final product we learnt how to use garage band to make the soundtrack to give our film atmosphere.

During our preliminary task we learnt how to use final cut which we were again able to use during our final task. From our preliminary task we learnt how to use the 180° rule which was useful to make our film look realistic and effective. If we had not used this rule our footage would not run smoothly.

Overall a lot of the skills we learnt from our preliminary task were useful. We learnt how to use a variety of camera angles and learnt how to effectively represent genres.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our audience would be teens and adults interested in romance, adventure and mystery since these would be the main themes throughout the film. It would contain dark and haunting scenes, which would be inappropriate for those under the age of 15 years of age. Similarly to Gaslight, which is rated 15 for similar reasons, as both Gaslight and our product contain elements of drama and horror. Our target audience in terms of gender would be predominantly female. This is because the protagonist is female, with the film being based around her life. However the most common target audience of thrillers is a male audience and so through the genre it would attract a male audience as well. We would aim at a mass audience as it has quite common themes of a popular film.

What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

Gaslight is a film that to some extent is similar to ours. Gaslights main distribution company is Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which is a big distribution company. This distribution company is big and being realistic, they wouldn’t distribute our media product because they closed down years ago. We did some research about what kind of low budget independent film companies would distribute our product. One company we found that distributed both mainstream and independent films was Icon Film Distribution. This company has a wide range of film genres and quite a few horrors and thriller. As our media product is a dramatic thriller we thought it could be possible that they could distribute our media product. Another option could be metrodome group, which is an independent horror distributer. They distribute a lot of films made in the UK and all of them are low budget. We then looked at optimum releasing, which would be the most likely to distribute our film since they specialize in horrors and thrillers for example. The last exorcism and splice, neither of these films were particularly popular but were still distributed which is why we think they would be the most likely to help as Optium Releasing is a digital distribution company meaning our media product could be shown in lots of different cinemas at the same time costing less than it would if we made individual prints of the film. Also we had the idea of putting our film in film festivals as they are good advertising and festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival are mainly for independent films, and has helped films such as Hurt Locker and Winters Bone which are both independent films.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film opening introduces our female protagonist. The opening of our film revolves around her life and the trouble she has been facing. To approach this matter, we used a character around the ace of 16 and a female to create a seemingly vulnerable character who will develop psychological trauma throughout the film which leads her away from appearing vulnerable. We did this because gaslight was about the audience feeling sympathy for a vulnerable character. We made our character appear vulnerable by using non-diegetic voiceovers. the flashbacks are the most important part because it contradicts her depression. It also gives the audience something to find out about. we made her a smoker in order to stay with the stereotype of a teenager today. The main groups our film represents are females getting revenge on those who hurt their loved ones when the government doesn’t want to know. It also represents the drug system in society today and how ruthless people can be to get their fix. All around it represents the underside of the legal system in today’s world. It shows the fact that people who are involved with drugs are ignored or frowned upon instantly, they are not helped and are left to survive on their own.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We have created a dramatic thriller; we got the idea to do a dramatic thriller from films like gaslight. This is a real media product that bases its story on a girl who lost someone close to her and went a bit mad because of it. In comparison to stereotypical dramatic thrillers it is lacking the action scenes like most other film beginning’s, in most dramatic thrillers there is no non-diegetic dialogue unless being used in a sound bridge, we used non-diegetic dialogue the entire time to let viewers understand her story, the mise-en-scene was basic, bridge boots big coat and a classic cigarette to show signs of stress in her life and the coat shows mourning which isn’t a normal thing at the beginning of dramatic thrillers, they may wear black but there isn’t usually mourning unless from a chase scene. The style of her clothes is a stereotypical teenage outfit. So is the cigarette when adults think of teenagers they tend to think of them smoking and acting out for example by moping like our protagonist is. We decided to manipulate this stereotype to work for us it would make teenagers warm to her quickly because they could relate the instant they saw her. The structure of our media product is different to the conventions of our genre because we decided to keep quite aloof which is an uncommon this for a dramatic thriller opening.

In gaslight the opening shows the main character surrounded by people to show her involvement in her community. We decided to isolate our character because she only knew one person in England and also the isolation reiterates the genre. The camerawork we used made her look even more isolated despite the fact there were others walking past her. For our flashback scenes we used the gladiator film for research and used that theme of him thinking of the flashback then when it stops showing his eyes straight away to get their reaction. We used flashbacks repeatedly to show how important these times of her life are to her. The flashbacks are an important part of our media product because it produces emotion in the audience and intensifies the genre of our media product.

At the end of our film opening, we have the protagonist alone on a set of swings, which again makes the audience feel sympathy, which is a rare emotion for the audience of a dramatic thriller. The only prop in our media product was a cigarette, which is seen through out the opening. It restates the stereotype that teenagers are rebellious. The mese-en-scene is very simple and works with the stereotype of a teenager, we did this because we wanted the audience to feel conflicted emotions of whether they wanted to sympathise with our protagonist or feel threatened by her.

Film Poster.

We made film posters because we wanted to advertise and to intrigue our audience. We thought it added to our project because it shows we planned our project thoroughly and had thought further that the opening sequence.
Poster Two.

We took inspiration from the poster for the film "Scream" as it was simple but effective. We chose to use the poster scream because in scream the female protagonist is the victim while in ours we are challenging the ideas that the female is always the 'damsel in distress' so we made the male a victim and used the scream poster as a kind f ironic representation. We used the idea of putting the image in black and white and using a single image of the protagonist's face. We included the title "Pretty Girls Make Graves" and the tag line "Nothing is sweeter than needed revenge" on the poster, giving the viewer little information as not to give away any story lines. We made two posters overall as the first was to plain and did not fit in with the theme of the film.

This was our first poster but after some consideration we decided it was to simple and plain.


Poster One.

Scream Poster.

DVD Cover

We likes the style of the Gladiator DVD cover and so that was our insperation for our own.

Costume List

In the first shot on the airplane we used a simple outfit, consisting of a hoodie, jeans, vest top and green earphones to give a stereotypical passenger look preparing for a long flight look.

Costume One.

In the second shot she shown stood thinging about how someone close to her has died, her outfit closely represents a funeral styled outfit. The outfit was made up from a denim mini skirt, black jumper, black military coat, black tights and black military boots.

Costume Two.

In the third shot she is wearing a black coat which is less dramatic than the funeral styled coat she is wearing in shot two, but it still shows mourning from moving to away from America to England. Her hood is pulled up implying she wants to be alone and the cigerette shows that she may be stressed and upset.

Costume Three.

In the Fourth shot she is wearing a dress, and is with Jake who plays Danny and even though you can not tell what he is wearing you can faintly see it is a more formal outfit than normal teen dress. This gives the impression they were on a date and were caught of gaurd and not able to change.

Costume Four.

In the final shot she is wearing comfortable clothing because she is used to her lifestyle in England in this shot, also the outfit doesn't change when Danny dissapears because she is trying to relive her memories.

Costume Five.

We used dull coloured t-shirts for our main male character in this scene as to rember a dull time before she knew him, to also give the impression that he was slightly depressed in this time period we used a band tee to furthur the idea thet the main characters are teenagers

Male costume 1

Dialogue

Two years in new york all for nothing, Mum ended up sending me home anyway

Apparently she was fed up of my attitude, so she sent me packing to Dad.

Adjusting to life in england was difficult but he made it easy.

Danny,*pause and brethe out* his long brown hair and his soft blue eyes always made me smile.

On the 23rd of march he changed, he was anxious, jumpy and constantly looking over his shoulder.

Then they found him.

(stressed and panicy tone) We ran, and all I could think of was that I needed to hide.

I didnt understand

They were looking for me it made no sense

(Whisper) My Danny

I really miss him.

So now i could either report him or get revenge for my beloved Danny.

All the areas in red we decided to get rid of for the actual film opening because we decided it gave too much a feeling of a trailer.

we were inspired to use a voice over in our product by a range of films and tv shows to let you see what the character is thinking, and we didn't want our character to be talking to herself throughout our product so we decided to let the voiceover be her thoughts, to let the viewer understand what she is going through, the flashbacks also help the viewer feel like they are hearing and seeing her thoughts. it gives the character another personality to what other characters may see. we did some research on voice overs and found; 'In film, the film-maker places the sound of a human voice (or voices) over images shown on the screen that may or may not be related to the images being shown. Consequently, voice-overs are sometimes used to create ironic counterpoint. Also, sometimes they can be random voices not directly connected to the people seen on the screen. In works of fiction, the voice-over is often by a character reflecting back on his or her past, or by a person external to the story who usually has a more complete knowledge of the events in the film than the other characters.'

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice-over