Screen Shots of Blog to Include in Edit

Photos from Filming

Preparation of Computer Screens

Many of our shots involve computer screens, as you would expect from a film about blogging and hacking. As well as preparing the blogs that are shown during the film, we also had to prepare screens that look like the kind of code used by hackers:

And we created a short film to look as if our hacker is downloading private files:

Preparation - Files

Our main characters look at files they have put together on each of their main suspects in our trailer, so we needed to create these files before filming. We took photos of the 'suspects' and made them black and white.

 

We then created files for each of the main suspects with official stamps and a summary of their suspected involvement:

 

 



Target Audience - Luke

When thinking about our target audience, there is one main thing to take into count, our genre. Our film has a genre which could be described as an action thriller along the lines of films such as "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "Tinker Tailor". A while ago this genre would mainly be assumed to appeal to a male audience but recently there is more awareness that a lot of women also read these thriller genre books and see the films. As all these films are based on books that have been popular, there is an audience out there and it is a mix of male and female. The age range starts at around 17 but it doesn’t really have a limit on age, there isn’t a certain age where the interest in mystery stops. This is because of the puzzle dynamic these books and films present, everyone loves to try and work out the ‘killer’ which creates a sense of interactivity which is why these films and books do so well. So while most research into target audiences focuses on demographics, I do not believe this is a particularly useful approach in this instance. For example, while it is tempting to say "The Girl..." was aimed at a younger audience, I am not sure this is true - I think it was aimed squarely at the reading audience, the many who had read the  book, without much worry about the age of the readers. So many films are now based on novels (Twilight, The Hunger Games) or other source material e.g. comics (The Avengers) and TV shows  (21 Jump Street, The Inbetweeners) for exactly this reason - as demographoic profiling becomes more unreliable, tapping into an established audience is a logical thing to do.

The best way to attract this audience is to get straight to the mystery in the trailers and posters. Once the sense of mystery is shown I believe this target audience shows a sense of interest. On posters this can be done through stills of scenes which get the audience thinking ‘what’s happening there’ and shocked faces of characters within the poster. Also, character posters are a good idea as this is a book adaptation so people are always interested to see whether the filmmaker had the same ideas as they did whilst reading the book. This creates a tease element which also promotes audience engagement. It is also key to make sure people know that the source material will be respected - if you liked the novel, you will not want the film to stray too far from it.

When researching target audiences I came across a couple of theorists on the subject. The one I partly agree with is Fiske and the active audience approach. He sees each audience member as an individual and that ‘there is no such thing as a target audience’. I don’t agree with the latter, but believe his point of an audience member being individual is something to take into account. I believe this because no one likes the idea that they can be grouped in with a bunch of other people, they like to feel different, so if our promotions feature little clues and hints at ‘secret’ stuff we capture all the individuals. The theorists Blumler + Katz and Silverstone also put forward interesting ideas when they see the audience as a ‘user’. Within this they say the audience has 3 reasons for seeing a film: entertainment, escapism and social bonding. To attract this audience we need to show excitement in our trailers, this can be done with short glimpses of actions scenes. The majority of the time it is those short action glimpses that get people talking. It involves the audience in the play and performance that Silverstone thinks is more important than just consumption these days.

Target Audience - Jess

As our film is a psychological thriller, it is going to attract a slightly older audience. Our expected age range would be around 17-35 year olds. We think that our film is going to be rated at an age 15, as it is not violent or gory enough to be an 18 but any age range younger then this would be inappropriate as the film is quite complex and there are mild violent  scenes included. This is a very common age range for films to be aimed at. This is because the ages 18-34 is classed as something called the ‘golden demographic’ this means that this is the ages in which people think are most likely to go to the cinema to watch a film. This age is assumed to be the age in which people have the most amount of free time and the most amount of disposable income to be able to spend on themselves. Appealing to this audience should be reasonably simple. Young adults are always assumed to be on the internet. Therefore trailers and social networking sites would be the most effective ways of making our film known to this age demographic and in the planning of our promotional campaign we have tried to account for this by including social networking elements such as a mock blog and character profiles on Facebook.

Having said this, I am aware that our target audience is changed largely because we are imagining that our film is based on a best-sellign novel. Therefore the film audience is going to depend heavily on who has been attracted to the novel, and this is not always who you might think. For example, Twilight is considered a teenage film but has a huge following from older women also. So it would be important for us to look at the novel's fan base and make sure we are not doing anything that might exclude or alienate any section of that audience.

Our film is not gender specific. It is traditionally assumed that girls like to watch rom-coms and boys like to watch action films, but this is a huge generalisation. Films such as ours are now seen to appeal to both men and women. Our film has factors that would make both men and women want to go and see it. For example, having a mixed gender cast makes the characters relatable to a mixed gender audience, and if the characters are relatable then people are more likely to go and watch the film.  Our film would attract both audiences as both gender seem to now be attracted to ‘the puzzle element’ in films. This is also known as the enigma code which allows the audience to question certain aspects of a film from the trailers, which hopefully would make them want to find out the answers. Films that use enigma code rely strongly on suspense, which ours does, to generate the right effect on the audience.

Overall, I think it is not as simple as it used to be to define a target audience. The temptation is to come up with an age category and a gender, and I know this is still done, but it does not feel that relevant to our film. Our genre is not age or gender specific and has a wide appeal - this is why films of our action thriller genre are often shown on TV during e.g. Christmas, as it is assumed it will have a mass appeal. The most important thing for us to think about when considereing target audience is genre and the book fans. We need to make sure our trailer makes it clear that all the favourite features of action thrillers will be in our film - ambiguous characters, danger, adventire, action, suspense, mystery, twists and turns. We also need to make it clear to the book fans that we are not straying too far from the novel.

Target Audience - Michael

We have decided that our target audience is comprised of both genders of the age 15 and above.  We believe that this is our audience because the crime and psychological thriller style of genre attracts both genders because of the varied and mixed cast, possible attractive cast members, and the puzzle element, which most enjoy trying to work out. The age demographic we picked was 15 and above because really most people enjoy our genre but the 15 rating means you can allow for action or violence that younger viewers shouldn’t see. We decided that 18 -34 was our golden age demographic in terms of leisure time and disposable income, who would watch our film due to the themes that might relate to them, but it’s actually a very open audience range.

In our research in other areas of the course, we have been looking at theorists such as Fiske who feel that audience categorisation is no longer relevant. While thinking about our target audience, I understood more what he means. It does seem inaccurate in this day and age to think of mass audiences who can be ddefined because of their age or gender - we can all watch what we want and the generations don;t have such different tastes any more. At the same time, when I started researching, it was obvious that real film companies do think in terms of a defined audience - for example, the changes to the Bond franchise, making it more gritty and less slapstick, has to reflect a perceived difference in audience tastes. Also, film companies clearly look for changes in general taste to reflect - for example, we have often linked our film to the "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" in our research, and this was made to reflect a new current appetite for Scandinavian film and TV and crime literature. So I think it makes sense for us to think of this target audience, who we can 'package' as Ang would put it because of their tastes rather than thier dempgraphic. Our target audience is definitely this group of people who enjoy crime-based action thrillers with lots of twists and turns, and we think we have an established audience because we are saying our film is based on a successful novel because we have seen this is a key trend.

 We hope to attract our target audience through different means, such as social networking, which is regularly used by our golden demographic so having a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter could guarantee us viewers. We were conscious of this when we planned out our own promotional campaign. Nowadays we use a system of identifying our target audience called “VALs” which focuses on people’s tastes and personal preferences, therefore meaning that it is important that our genre provides the audience with the items of interest they are looking for.  In terms of our film, it has action, pace, a central mystery, a complex and interesting plot and is in line with other popular texts that are around like “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

 One theorist, Silverstone, looks at different ways in which our audience could enjoy our productions.  He categorized them into consumption, play, where you like to pretend it’s real, and performance such as fan fiction and tribute videos on YouTube, which is a form of new pleasure that is extremely important now. All of these are good for making our target audience interested in our product and we need to provide opportunities in our campaign for these to happen. In order to appeal to them we can make it easier for them to feel as if they are a part of story such as in our case we have created the blogs from our film to extend our story world for major fans. 

Target Audience - James

Targeting your audience is the most important thing when it comes to any type of media but defining your target audience first is arguably the first and most important step. There are a number of ways to define and target your audience and there have been many arguments and debates on which is the best and most accurate way of doing this, especially in a changed media climate.

Understanding why an audience consumes any type of media is very important in order to know how to categorise and target them for your specific media type; in this case it is film. Blumler and Katz suggest that these ‘uses and gratifications’ are important for identifying audiences. There are a number of reasons why people watch films the most obvious one is entertainment, this simply means they want to watch it because they find it interesting and it passes the time. Therefore our trailer has to deliver action and pace to ensure that the audience will assume they will be entertained. Another reason people watch films if for escapism, this means you’re completely immersed in the film to the point that you forget everything else exists. People may want this experience for many different reasons: depression, boredom even stress. Again, we have to make sure that our trailer emphasises the puzzle element of our film as working this out would be one of the main escapes provided. One of the biggest reasons why people watch films is because of the social bonding elements, this means people will go and see a film to enjoy time with their friends and become closer whether it is going to the cinema or going round an mates house it’s not about the films it about who you watch the film with. We therefore have to make our film appear as if it is going to become popular or a social trend. Basing a film on a best-selling novel is one way to do this as you know there is already an existing audience.

Some people take the idea of entertainment and escapism further and relate it to the actual viewing experience.  Silverstone says there are three levels of this entertainment and escapism: number one consumption ,oldest pleasure; to be able to enjoy something you first have to consume it whether it be watch, read or listen. Second is play, the idea that some people like to pretend that that fantasy is real which links in with the implosion stage of the media world talked about by Baudrillard. This involves pretending the film is real, for example by reading the blog we provide as part of our promotional campaign. The third level is performance, actively doing something yourself, the recreation of things from that fantasy world like fan fiction and tribute videos and parody. This is a type of hyper-diegesis. These last two levels are considered relatively new pleasures, and we would hope that our audience would engage in these activities. once our products were available online 

Targeting audiences can be split up into two main viewing points; they are the idea that there are active audiences and the idea that there is a passive audience.

Active audience is the idea that audience can’t be grouped together because we are all individual with our own views and opinions. A theorist called Fiske suggests that people cannot be put into demographics because of our individuality and our ability to choose. He also says people resist some media text because of the amount of choice we have in this day and age. The way he summarised it is by saying there is no such thing as a target audience, there is only audiences meaning each person and classed as an audience. We therefore need to see our audience as a collection of individuals. This is why our teaser campaign has many elements, to hit as many different people as possible.

Passive audience is the idea that people are different but can be grouped together in to certain categories. A large way of doing this is the demographic approach which some theorists like Ang argue is too old fashioned, it involved grouping people by age, gender ability and social class. I do believe that is a bit old fashioned because from my experience just because a person is the same age or gender it does not mean they will definitely like the same things you do.   Also there is no longer such a discernible gap in gender tastes (I think it is old-fashioned to suggest that action thrillers appeal more to men) or in generational tastes (as now there is not such a clear divide between old and young, and what was once seen as middle age is now still young).

Another and slightly more up to date way is by categorising people in the VALS approach, VALS stands for Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles. This way categorises people by how they think and what they enjoy. Our film idea is in the genre of a psychological thriller; our audience would be very varied, but we would be aiming at both genders because this genre is generally popular with both genders. The age group we would try to appeal to would be 15 -35 these people are called the golden demographic because these people will probably be young enough not to have a family they have to take care of giving them even more time and disposable income. We would cater to their expected tastes by having action, a fast pace, an attractive cast and a strong mystery element as this is always popular.                         

 

Poster Research and Mock Ups

First we looked at posters in our genre to see if there were any general ideas we should follow. As you can see from the posters below, there is a lot of variety in this genre. Some posters focus on one character while others are more sharply divided and give a sense of more characters and more of the narrative. The colour palettes vary from bright colours to muted greys.

Gives a good idea of opposing sides - Anonymous X on one side and Y on the other? But might become too busy and crowded.

Gives the opportunity for lots of action shots from the film and therefore easy narratively - but stills from filming ofetn pixillate and again, we are looking for a darker, cleaner, more gritty feel.

Simple but effective - face of journalist and something to indicate action? Maybe even the blog?

Again, dark and simple. Focus is on character over plot - can we afford to do this? We are imagining that or film is based on a best-selling novel so maybe.

Like the graphics here - maybe we can overlay blog onto journalist's face?

One possibility is to use the X of Anonymous X to divide the poster so we can focus on more characters. We would imagine the X being overlaid with typing from the blog:

We took close ups of the cast to use in poster mock ups:

We turned these black and white to fit our dark colour palette:

This is a rough attempt at the poster:

Magazine Cover Research and Sketches

We have already looked at the general characteristics of magazine covers and have tried to refine our research a little more to covers featuring films in our genre:

 

 

The main feature in common is the ways in which when there are one or two main characters, they gaze directly at the audience; when there are three, the main character usually faces front and has a direct gaze, but the other characters look in different directions. This is probably the direction we will go with our magazine cover.

 



Preparation - Newspaper Article

We need one of our characters to look at a newspaper article in our trailer. The front page features a story about the Anonymous X blogger. In order to achieve this we used a newspaper front cover and added our own photo / headline:

 

 

There is an obvious difference in colour which we have tried to correct in Photoshop but without success so far. This is a shame as it is one of our first shots so we will keep working on it.

Preparation - Investigation Board

As part of our trailer, we see the main characters looking at the investigation board they have set up and then tearing it down in frustration. We took photos of the main suspects and created this board to be ready for filming these shots: