Research for Audience

The targeted audience for our thriller will be young adults aged 15 to 25 years old, preferably male. This decision is done for varied reasons as thrillers, especially, could carry inappropriate scenes for a younger aged audience, for example our thriller will include swear words, the use of guns, the representation of death and blood, as well as action and it will encourage tension and the frustration feelings.

Looking at this in more detailed, the targeted audience should also live in an appropriate environment, city or town. In our thriller a busy environment will be shown as well as the use of modern technology. The sequence will play the role of old and modern, contrasting the two to confuse the audience as well the acting to achieve an unexpected perspective of the movie.

If the audience is surrounded by a similar or identical environment they will feel closer to the protagonist and more involved to the film, as their knowledge and experience of living in the city and in its chaos will be much better than a person living in a rural place.

As we are talking about young adults, they would spend their free time playing at video games, watching movies and going out with friends. Those things are really common at this targeted age, this will make them subconsciously knowing lost more they should on thriller movies, story and sequences basis, as they are mentally influenced by them.

Also in this group age the idea of dreaming is a strong faith where the thought of a hero or a spy in a thriller sequence, incorporating the idea of a job, inspires and invite the audience personal feelings.

We have to bear in our mind that this target audience will present a special education and idea of job, different to an audience living in the countryside. Education will represent a big part of the actual life as college and university will impact their social and future life. They are privilege to a good and secure education that lots of common people cannot afford. Education will also be a restricted vision but wide knowledge on different subjects that could stimulate positive feeling inspiring them into further researches and studies.

15 to 25 years old audience won’t we experienced enough talking about job wise, so they would rely their knowledge on this topic mainly on their surrounding and their parents. They will know lost about different jobs, and facts about them to give them the opportunity to have their opinions about each and a further idea of the future career.

Young adults audience at this stage of their life, overall will start to have a wider knowledge on incomes, becoming more independent and responsible. They would still spend money for their own pleasure. They would start taking in account lot more things than a child but not as many as adults with more responsibility, especially if towards other people.

If the thriller is well known and advertised all around, it would be worth the ticket’s cost and this targeted audience wouldn’t mind spending money on a good movie. 

Adding on top of this, those people have grown in a luxury environment, having a house, food, education and parents with a wealthy job so their character would be in progression of watching the thriller.

When filming a movie, the audience is one of the most important elements, as the movie will see profit by the box office.

Research Film Distribution Companies

The bases for a thriller are similar to every thriller just presented or shown in a different perspective adding elements to make it a unique movie.

Tension, frustration, action, mystery as well as death are the main elements that you will find in most thrillers. To find an appropriate Film Distribution Company to produce our thriller we need to take in account the previous movie they made and the targeted audience they look at. For example to make our thriller we would never ask to Disney channel as they have as a targeted audience children and we both wouldn’t gain any profit.

It is really important to choose the right film distribution company as they could change completely the look of your movie. I am personally looking to famous companies that wouldn’t need lots of advertising as the audience will rely on the popularity of the film distribution company and give a positive first impression.

I looked at varied companies and I ended with the possibility of using two of them; Altitude and The 20^th Century Fox UK. Those two film distribution companies are well known and make every year fantastic movies with a high box office profit.

Looking at their web site their movies have strong features, and their targeted audience is identical or similar to our thriller, you can easily tell this by the movie they present in their web site, most of them are thriller, horror as well as different types.

Those movies present the idea of nightmare or dream in an audience of young adults and they present strong language as well as scene not appropriate for a younger audience. They also have movies for adult audience and family specially The 20^th Century Fox.

Both of those film distribution company are well know and expensive. Altitude is less known comparing to the other one, so costs wise it will be cheaper.

I believe that if you want to produce a good professional movie you should spend more on money for the film distribution company and then you will see a much higher profit. Also they would make a good publicity to the movie reducing the cost for advertising. To justify those facts I watched few thrillers from their best movies and I saw the rank list of the best movie they made and they made really famous movie well know by all the filming production companies.

Overall those film distribution companies are both superb, but I believe the best for our thriller will be Altitude as it is specified on thriller and horror and has a targeted audience closer to our description. Also they have produced really famous movies and it is well know, so we would be secure on ending with a professional work. The budget will be lot reduced compare to other companies being an advantage for us.

Cast

For our thriller, as the main character we wanted to use a middle age looking man that would have looked good on camera and would fit with the story line. Although we had the opportunity to use a member of the staff, as a group we discuss and we realised that a teacher wouldn’t perform the piece as we wanted to, spoiling the whole trailer, also they would have been busy risking to have them for half a day and not the entire shoot day.

We finally came with the idea of contacting a good drama A2 students, which we were sure of playing a good role and performing at out standard. We got in contact with him through email and accept to be in the thriller.

Unfortunately few days before the actual shoot day, the actor decided to pull out, so we needed to come out with a second actor. We were sure on asking someone that was an actor but we were worried, as the best actors of the school we already been taken in vary thriller and we wanted to be different. We found and A1 good at acting and with the right look to represent the main character in out thriller and he accept happily to be in it.

I was really pleased with the final result as the actor really showed his passion and profession aspect of the subject interpreting the situation in a realistic way, also helping us out and listen with all our requirements and changes.

Preparation

To prepare our self for the thriller we did a mood board and a storyboard to get the main ideas clear and start to get into more details. Both of those little projects are visual so to look appealing to our eye and to capture straight away our idea. The viewers looking at those should have an idea of the opening sequence and see all the main elements start imaging those together in a complete scene. We have to bear in our minds that this is just a visual aspect of the project so all the sound and light effects are not included and the viewers aren’t prepared for this.

For the mood board we looked at vary pictures in Internet that would look similar of how we imagined the thriller opening sequence.

                                            (done by Ella)

The story board is something visual but we look at camera movement and different perspective to show the same thing, analyse it and chose the best shot. We tried to give a general idea of the on going of the thriller but we didn’t give much detailed about it as all of the members in my group are inexpert about cameras.

                                            (done by Francesca)

Development

Now that we had our idea proved by the media staff we can start develop it into details.

Firstly we started to look at casting as it is essential that our actor will fit the character and it will be able to act effetely what we are going to ask. As our main character is an ex police man with a daughter we firstly thought about Fill a media teacher, so an adults mainly that would look good in camera and suit the role but as a back up we thought of using a drama student from the year above as they could possibly look older with the right costumes and some makeup and we are sure that their acting is going to be good enough too look realistic and effective on camera.

So we emailed a couple of people to see their respond and in case organise our self with a different plan. 

We then look at possible costumes and props that would cost for us to set up the thriller. A suite, padlock, keys and a possible location would be between £200 and £300 looking at the most convenient way. Fortunately this cost is going to be lot reduced, as the school will provide most of the material for us. For example the location we thought of using the studio as it will be lot easier to film and we could use easily the artificial lightings. Also the costumes we are requiring, the suite, is fairly easy to borrow it from someone.

Coming back to the location obviously if we want the media department to build it for us it will be needed to show in detailed what it would look like to make sure of any possible problems that we could come across after half term when we are going to plan everything for the day of filming, so we designed the room and we gave draw to them.

For the keys we looked on varied web sites and bought around 300 and 400 different types of old style keys.