This a video from someone who made a thriller for their media coursework quite some years ago which means it was quite a while ago and yet they got great feedback even without the many ways of distributing and advertising it we have now these days i.e. facebook and twitter.
By posting the video on Youtube the person who made this film was able to get both good and bad feedback from viewers quite simply. The video also gets watched and shared around so the amount of people who watch the video hit a high number which means you can get more feedback.
The internet has allowed us to distribute our thriller to a wider audience; this I think will help us understand who our actuarial audience is. In the beginning we believed that our audience is based upon teenagers, but let’s see after we distribute it on the internet. Already our thriller will be getting a cinematic screening amongst our fellow thriller makers. This will help us see what our fellow peers think about I.C.U , after the cinematic show this will allow me to ask my fellow peers if they would pay £8.oo to watch this thriller. It will also be released on 200 copies, allowing other members out of the age group to see it also. My main aim is to show my thriller too many different age groups to see which ones it aims towards the most. The internet such as you tube videos will allow many different age groups to see our thriller , especially face book , because it has many different age groups on that social network. This thriller done by students called GENESIS has got many hits as well comments, this is defiantly a way of which we will be following. The views on this thriller are a massive 19,715 which shows that their distribution through you tube has helped their thriller get watched. Also By posting this link on face book so that face bookers can click on the link and watch it on you tube this will get more viewers also as it advertises it, also as it is a low budget student video , it will also be released on vimeo as it has an inderpendednt low budget production company.
These are the diffrent places where our thriller can be distributed at
Also in order to promote , we would promote our film with no cost on newspapers like METRO , becuase they are very commen newspapers.
I would also consider advertising it on leaflets , magazines bus stops and Tv adverts because both men and women watch tv adverts.We would also think of some potential sponsers , i suggested Tv adverts such as neghbours or home and away as they are well known watch Tv series , this is a part of a particular style of marketing for our thriller.
I chose to look at a film called stepfather , this was a thriller that inspired us the most , we as a class all watched this thriller , we indicated that from the opening sequence the man is doing his normal daily routines , but however he seems to see dead body’s but still carried on as normal. From the opening sequence there is only a man introduced this indicated that he is the main character, the man in this thriller gives out a very normal imagine of himself, this is only the first half of the opening. Likewise in I.C.U the same principle is applied, the main male character is doing his daily routines, but the weary music behind it gives a sense that something is happening, The similarities are that the personality and character these males bring out both in Stepfather and ICU is similar both give out a normal image of them self, but however something is going on. However, the difference is that the situation is different, in stepfather he sees dead body’s but in ICU he is getting recorded seems like he is getting followed.
As you can see there is a lot of intertexuality between our main character and the main character from "The Stepfather" this is because we were really inspired. You can see the stairs, a very typical scene recreated in all thrillers, we got different angels, but it still created the same effect. Furthermore the character staring back at himself in the mirror, also a very typical move all thriller directors will use, as it creates a lot of suspense as us as humans will always have our mind playing tricks believe you may see something in the reflection. We have intertexualised the characters to show that both representations are similar.
We represent our character using props also, with beer bottles, dirty dishes and cigarettes which all connoted his character.
The title sequence I am comparing mine to is 'Dexter' because of all the similarities between them.
Above is the 'Dexter' title sequence. I've set out screen shots of our title sequence the way they have so its easier for me to explain. In the first box we can see the word 'Dexter' in big bold capitals which we incorporated into our title aswell (see image below). Both title sequences show what the main characters do in the morning once they've woken up. In image two of the 'Dexter' title sequence he's looking into the mirror which we kind of copied in our version (third image).
In the 4th ikmage of both title sequences you can see both characters are using the sink. Images 5 and 6 of both sequences show breakfast being made which adds to the suggestion that its the morning time.
Once we had reached the last 3 images the only mutual features were that they were all closes ups of what was going on at the time.
The seemed to have incorporated a lot of the 'Dexter' sequence without even noticing but we're quite happy with it because of how good that sequence was. We could of done much better the some of the shots of ours though.
The first box has an image of the title. The shot is in clear bold writing. We have also got similar writing as our one is bold also. In addition the background colour for DEXTER contrasts very well with their bold red writing the same applies to I.C.U the black is great with the white writing.
The second shot is an over the shoulder shot of the man looking into the mirror, we have a familiar shot when faysal is looking towards the laptop, this I think is great in to different ways, as both the mise en scene is used very wisely in DEXTER he is looking into the mirror, however in I.C.U he is looking at the laptop our key prop. The third shot is a very close up shot of the male actor shaving, however here we do not have a similar shot but one that can match is when Faysal is brushing his teeth using a prop, just like in Dexter when he is using a shaver. These closes up shots allow the audience to see the normal activities these individuals are doing but a very suspenseful meaning behind it. The 4th shot is the most familiar shot we have with DEXTER, this is a very close up shot of a plug hole , however in I.C.U this shot is not a close up shot and is not a main shot , in ICU the character just spits out his toothpaste into the plug hole. The next shot, is just a close up shot of a prop, both these shots must give an indication of something in particular, in Dexter the shot of the egg, is amazing it is clearly shown to give some sort of indication of something, in ICU the close up of cigarettes are there to show that the character is stressed and has some sort of tension about something. Another conventional shot used is the mid shot of the characters face, in DEXTER it may show stress and some sort of suspense; however in ICU this is just a mirror reflection of the character.
Overall, I believe Dexter is the closest we can get to comparing; however we have also used interxuality from “the stepfather”
In this title sequence shown above (DEXTER) there are many similarities to our opening to a thriller also. I have shown this down below in comparison.
As you can see the first still shot of the film DEXTER is in bold capital letters, we have also got a similar title in capital letters, centred and bold, contrasting with the background and standing out, letting the viewers know exactly what our title is and lets the opening carry one.
In the second shot it is a over the shoulder shot, of the man looking in the mirror, we have a shot where it is angled so that the camera is not viewed in the mirror, very similar to the opening of DEXTER. We also have a title in our sht as well as the real media production.
The 3rd shot is a very close close up of the male actor shaving, we do not have an exact matching shot, but we do have a close up of the toothpaste and the toothbrush, presenting to the audience that this man is going to brush his teeth, the delayed action of our male actor squeezing the toothpaste onto the toothbrush builds up a lot of tension within the scene.
The next shot is almost the same as our shot, we have our character spitting into the sink, and the still shot of the real media production has blood. Both shots are very similar, and both link to the previous shot, helping the audience link the actions of the character together.
The centre shot of the very close close-up of the egg, is amazing, we do not have a close up of anything, but the idea of food it is similar as we have a shot of our actor mixing the tea.
The next shot in the real media production there is a really close up of a knife going down on the orange. We yet again don't have a close-up shot but we do have a shot of cutlery and lots of plates left in the sink. The 7th shot is a close up of the actors hands, and we have a very similar shot of our actor taking the CD out of the packaging, this is very similar as it is suspenseful as we don't know what both characters are going to do with these props. Close ups are used int he next shot once again, in the real media production the prop is so close we can barely tell what the prop is, which makes it very suspenseful, also our close up explains our character, he is very stressed, smokes, wants to take his mind off things etc. The last still
shot is very similar to the real media production, rather than a portrait view of our character we have a side view of him lighting up his cigarette.
It is clear that we have used the inspiration of the real media production ‘Dexter’ to help with our shot types in our thriller opening. We have also used intertexuality from ‘The Stepfather’ also, forthe opening of our thriller, intertexualising the idea of a male waking up and getting ready, we have some clear intertexuality shots from our thriller.
Furthermore, we have also been inspired by the opening of the real media production ‘Seven’, as the title sequence begins with its production company, after about 00:40 seconds, as the research we have produced before in class, showed us that normal real media thriller openings, titles do not roll in until 00:30-00:40 seconds. We followed the sequence of the titles, of what comes next, intertexualising the title sequence of ‘Seven’ to try and convince our viewers that our opening was professional.
This is some of the feedback that I received from some people who viewed the film. They mostly liked our shots and sound.
We posted the video on Youtube aswell so we could get some responses although the responses on the actual youtube page were not many some of the members of the group were able to get some good responses via Facebook and Twitter.
These show that people responded properly to our thriller and like it. Many of them had only good things to say. This shows that social networking sites are the best way to promote things which is why ive started to notice thats how Artists and movie companies get some of their films noticed.
I have promoted my thriller opening using facebook, youtube, vimeo and twitter. This has helped me gain audience feedback, negative and positive, so I know what I have done well, and what I need to improve on.
Here you can see that i have promoted my thriller opening on facebook, and have also requested for people to give me feedback on a different social networking site, 'Twitter'.
My best comment that i recieved was posted by 'Cee Nguyen Vi' "Good of use angels, background music fits well.. however the sounds are too loud (door squeak, typing on the keyboard)" This has helped me realise if i was to re-produce this thriller opening that i would improve my skills on soundtrack pro.
I used another device to upload my thriller opening onto, to recieve even more feedback from other viewers, it is good that i have used youtube as it is world wide, and anyone can have access to it.
From YouTube, I also recieved a really good comment, that can help me with futher evaluatuion of my thriller opening.
" it was great:) great job editing and cutting the clips. the only thing i would fix is the audio. there are points where i swear i hear a girl talking in the end of a clip from off screen. color correction/brightnesscontrast would add something to the video. otherwisse, great job ;) "
I have also promoted my thriller, using face book and YouTube; this has me a overall feedback and evaluation of my thriller. This has allowed me to see whether I have done well, by getting these feedbacks I have got both positive and negative feedback, which has given me an overall picture of my success.
We discovered in the end that, this thriller will more likely to appeal to adults then teenagers, but some will have an interest also.
We asked some students in class “is this the type of thriller you would watch in the cinema” These where the responses
“I think it was good, and I would love to see what was behind the story of him getting recorded”
“It isn’t really my thing, but that’s me personally but overall I think it is very suspenseful and interesting”
Then after the cinema I asked some students what they thought of our thriller.
“I love the digested sounds, it was very creepy especially the door handle bit”
“The shots where marvellous, this is defiantly something I would love to watch”
So out of 10 , 7 said that they would love to go watch this film and all these students are at the age of 16 to 17 , shows that this can be our target audience after all.
I thought the idea of male actors would be much more interesting rather than the obvious a woman being "blackmailed". This is a very obvious move that all directors make; I wanted to be more unique. Using male actors will attract more male audiences, with the technology, this will draw in more of the younger generation and also because men begin the film, women would be interested in how good looking / sexy the men look, so this would also draw in the female audience. I did not want the women to follow the stereotype of being seen as weak and vulnerable so they had to play the role of someone filming them in their own house, and they get scared and call for help or something. I wanted an original clip that would interest all types of people from different age groups, with men going against their stereotype of being strong and not scared of anything, this would make the men even more interested to watch the film and be interested to see what happens further on in the film.
