Evaluation task 4: Part 2- My Target Audience

As you can see in the video above, I have gone around the country and interviewed a few people all from different places and backgrounds. All of these people fit into either my secondary or primary target audience and it was useful to see what films they had all previously seen.

The only problem that I encountered in doing this was that within the time I had, I struggled to find woman that were willing to be filmed.

I used my IPhone 4S to film the interviews and later used IMovie to edit the shots together, to add music, photos and annotations. All photos were taken myself apart from the Football club crests, for example the shot of my dad outside the Liver Building and of myself in the Cavern Club, where The Beatles began, both places being in Liverpool.

The sound in the video came out rather quiet in places so in order of appearance we have:

'The last film I saw was American Sniper, my name is Alex, I'm 19 and I'm from Stoke-On-Trent.'

'Hi I'm Jade, I'm from Stoke, I'm 20 and the last film I saw was Fifty Shades of Grey.'

'Jordan, 21, last film I saw, Inbetweeners 2.'

'My names Gary, I'm 29 and the last film I saw was American Sniper and I'm from Liverpool, Croxteth.'

'Hi, my names Motil, I'm 30, I'm French, the last time I went to cinema was to see Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.'

'My names Ellena, I'm 18. I'm from Sanbach, Cheshire and the last film I saw at the cinema was Taken 3.'

'Hello I'm Nick, I'm 16 from Guildford and the last film I saw was Taken 3.'

'Hello my name is Martin. I'm 51. And the last film that I saw at the cinema was Interstellar.'


The Music in the video is 'We didn't start the fire' by Billy Joel, 'Penny Lane' by The Beatles, 'Waterloo' by ABBA and 'Hey Ya!' by OutKast

Evaluation Task 4: Part 1

The Fifth Estate (taken from www.quora.com) : The movie only earned high ratings with the Under 18 crowd, where it averaged a 7.5. Unfortunately, the Under 18 demographic is badly underrepresented in comparison to the other age brackets, accounting for only 224 of the film's 9395 votes. The film scored higher with women than men in every age bracket. Unfortunately, women were also underrepresented, comprising just 23% of the voters. American users averaged 5.6, compared to foreign audiences averaging 6.1.

The Bourne Identity : 'The bourne Identity' is a thriller and action film which is quite similar to our genre/plot. From these ratings we can see that the film is hugely popular with males, especially ages 18-29 with 45,875 votes compared to females ages 18-29 with 5,660 votes.

  The Adjustment Bureau (taken from deadline.com): The studio acquired the “B” CinemaScore pic (with ages up to 34 giving it either an “A-” or “B+” — from MRC for $62 million. Exit polls showed the audience was 73% ages 30 years and older/27 % under 30 years of age and 47% male/53% female. Tracking indicated the film appealed to an older demographic because it’s a romance, a thriller, and a sci-fi’er all in one with known Damon and Emily Blunt starring. But it tracked with men and women over age 25, and Universal’s marketing department did a more than decent job.

In terms of my own primary target audience, it would be between 18-29 year old males. However, my secondary audience would include cinema goers of 30-45 year old males, also with female audience members aged 18-45.

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' titles evalutation

This opening title sequence evaluation begins with the production companies, Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer pictures which only stays on screen for 3 seconds. This continues with every name throughout the sequence, as they all stay on screen for 3 seconds only and all scattered around the screen in the corners and bottom of the screen in quite a small font. Even the director, David Fincher stays on screen for 3 seconds on the left hand side, and it is the same for Daniel Craig.

What this says is that the film is clearly story led due to the pre-sold element of a hugely sucesfull book, that first became a Swedish film, as the book was written by a Swede, Stieg Larson and then adapted once more into an English film starring recognised British and American actors such as Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. Even the tile, although in slightly larger writing, still only stays on screen for 3 seconds.

Order of titles in 'Catch me if you can'

The sequence begins with the names of the Production companies, with the main one, Dreamworks staying on screen for 5 seconds which is longer than the next three that only stayed on screen for 4 seconds. The second title is the directors (Steven Spielburgs, obviously a big name) that was centre screen for 5 seconds. Next came the main actor of Leonardo DiCaprio who's name stayed on centre screen for 4 seconds, then the next main name appeared of Tom Hanks, that is still a huge role in the film, however as it is less important it only remained on screen for 3 seconds. Each time a new name has appeared so far, the time that it stays on screen for decreases.

Next we get to the tile of the film which is much larger than the previous titles and remained on screen for 5 seconds, the same as Dreamworks and Steven Spielburg.

Opening title's order 'Licence to Kill'

The entire opening title sequence of 'Licence to Kill' features 68 names and titles throughout, however we are able to distinguish who are the people of the most importance to the film through the order they appear, how long they remain on screen for, where on screen they appear and how big the text is. For example, Albert R. Broccoli is feautured first for 5 seconds and appears in centre screen, so this combined with the word 'presents' after his name, we can assume that he is the director, therefore clearly of great importance to the production. Timothy Dalton, the lead actor comes onto screen next and remaining there for only 4 seconds which tells the audience that yes he is important, but he is not as important as Broccoli.

Next comes 'As Ian Fleming's James Bond' which is of great importance because it is telling the audience where this story originally came from, this stays on screen for 5 seconds. This is longer than Timothy Dalton but it appeared after him therefore it is saying that Dalton is more important to the film, however without Fleming the film wouldn't have been made.

The longest title of them all is the films title 'Licence to Kill' which stays in centre screen in much larger writting than the previous titles for 8 seconds. After the title comes the rest of the actors names, however we can see that they are not the main actors because they have appeared far later in the sequence, they are in smaller font, they are not in the centre of the screen but on the left or right and are often joined by another name at the same time.

Evaluation Tast 3: 'What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?'

I would describe our media product as a political thriller featuring a high level of action. The image that it gives off is one of an American/Hollywood film working with a mid-budget, however I would also say that despite this fact our thriller would fit well with Working Tile Films. Working Title films is still a British based production company that was bought out by Universal Studios around 15 years ago.

My reasoning behind this is simple as I feel that even though our product has many Hollywood elements to it, there is still a British feel to it on top of the main image. Working Title Films is a mid-budget British film production company that is now a subsiduary of Universal Studios, and has recently made Hollywood financed films such as 'I give it a year', 'Nanny Mcphee', 'The Theory of Everything', 'About Time' and 'Rush'. These films are all British, they have all been financed by American companies which gives Working Tile the money to create a high standard production for their British target audience, but could still be succesfull in both the UK and US.

If our film had a high budget then we would add a lot of CGI to create a more visually entertaining thriller, but we would do this to a certai amount in order to retain the political image to it. When it comes to distribution our film could be advertised through Social Media, Flash Mobs, Websites, Billboards and Trailers to provide wide spread talk about our product and set it up so that it has high anticipation from people both at home and abroad. In the exhibition stage of our thriller, I would expect it to do well in the box office with an averagely succesfull opening weekend. When the cinema viewing has ended then we would put exclusive editions of the movie on places like NetFlix and NowTV and following that we would take it to DVD with a special features disk with interactive games, special effects, interviews from the Cast and Crew, deleted scenes and so on.

Evaluation task 2- How does your product represent particular social groups?

In our opening title sequence we used 3 charecters, 1 major and 2 minor.

Simon Hudson was our major character playing a middle age, middle class government worker. We are able to show his age and class through his actions, clothing and the contents of the bedroom. Simons charater had recently accquired stolen government secrets stored on a hard drive, that he was attempting to keep away from our minor charecters and in our opening, succeeding in this. We wanted Simon to be seen in a positive way, with good intentions, presenting him as likeable character.
Below is a picture of Simon Hudson, our major character.

The next two characters that featured in our opening title sequence were played by Ted Jackson and Adam Grant. These two characters are of a lower class than Simons character, however they remain to play two political 'heavies' working to retrieve the hard drive. We wanted to make the audience dislike these two charecters, which we tried to present through their body language, their movement, hard facial expression.

 Minor Characters Adam Grant and Ted Jackson

Evaluation Task 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation task 1 from Ollie Tennant



Here are the clips that inspired certain shots in my Thriller.

A scene from Die Hard, where there is a near miss as the man does not get caught.

POV shots in Breaking Bad that inspired our shot in the bag.