Evaluation Task 4 (Part 2) Who would be the Target Audience for your product?

After analysing the content of the interviews we carried out for our Target Audience, we have reached some conclusions about their age, background and preferences. Adding to this, I have created a fake Facebook profile to highlight the main ideas. The layout is very simple but the most important thing is the information shown. It was difficult to decide on the age range and hobbies because almost everyone we asked around the school, beyond their age or interests, agreed that they found our thriller sequence compelling as a concept.

Evaluation Task 4 (Part 1) Who would be the Target Audience for your product?

In order to identify our target audience, Myles, Emma, Ellis and I have gone around Hurtwood to ask different people divided on their age and gender a couple of questions that will help us in the process. Some questions were given to us, like "What do you expect to see in a thriller?", while the last five ones were created by us:

1. What are your hobbies/interests?
2. How do you find out about movies?
3. How do you usually watch movies?
4. How do you choose a specific film to watch?
5. Have you seen 'Taken'? Did you like it?

I have been interviewing everyone, trying to be structured and make the people feel comfortable when opening up to me, while Myles was the camera man and Ellis edited the final video. Here it is:

Evaluation Question 3 (Part 2) Which institution would distribute your media product and why?

Which institution would make our film based on what we actually made?

After doing some research into the topic, I have found a distribution company which could realistically develop our idea from what we have. It is called CinemaNX and is relatively new in the industry, being created in the year 2007 and distributing their first film that same year. Its founder and producer is Steve Christian, who died suddenly this February 2017 at age 53. Over the last ten years, CinemaNX has distributed films which are similar to ours in terms of story line and, though they did not count with high budgets, managed to get a reasonable revenue. Most of them are action thrillers as well as drama, some examples being "The Disappearance of Alice Creed", "TT3D Closer to the Edge", "Waking Ned Devine" and "Orson Welles and I". Recently, they co-produced a film  which is currently in its stage of post-production about A.A. Milne, the British author of The Winnie The Pooh novels. Throughout their films, they have used a variety of well-known actors such as Zac Efron and Christian McKay. In the A.A. Milne's Project, the leading couple is formed by Domnhall Gleeson and Margot Robbie. 

I have chosen "The Disappearance of Alice Creed" as an example to illustrate the similarities between this media text and our thriller. The first one deals with the kidnapping of a girl who comes from a rich family in order to get a ransom. It is unconventionally directed, like our film, and it is full of plot twists that change the view that the spectators have of  the characters. The budget was only of $1,500,000, and the acting is in the hands of three actors: Gemma Arterton, Martin Compston and Eddie Marsan. The revenue ($1,605,139) did not mean much gross profit for the company, but the critics were generally outstanding (82% in Rotten Tomatoes and praised both by The Guardian and TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival).

CinemaNX is such a small company that it lacks a Wikipedia page and, according to the data found in Linkedin, its permanent employers merely range from 11 to 50 people. I believe that such a small company, though it would be careful not to risk it, would probably be willing to grasp our idea and distribute it as a whole film because we share the same passion and creativity that Christian always had, qualities that many co-workers highlighted about him and his way of leading the company. Our idea is quite avant-garde if we take a look at the technical aspect, but yet it holds the values of a true blockbuster.

The institution does not specialise in any genre in particular, but the majority of its films are either comedies or thrillers, with some dramas along the way. They also distributed one animation movie, "Chico & Rita", which actually became quite popular at the time. It was praised by the critics and constituted a novelty for the company and the worldwide audiences. This is among many other examples of when CinemaNX invested in completely new projects, being consciously reckless but making the right choices. They give lots of opportunities to new directors and actors, and they know how to captivate different sectors depending on the kind of film that they have planned. Their publicity campaigns range from creating Facebook pages to advertise the film in question to presenting it to festivals such as the London Film Festival or Tribeca. I believe that their ways of spreading word-to-mouth are effective and cost-efficient at the same time, so I would like my film to go through a similar marketing procedure. It would also be remarkable if the company organised a campaign to choose the Cinema that would host the premiere of the film, as they did in 2010 making a smart move.

I have created a Timeline which includes the main events since the origins of the distribution company.

Bibliography:

http://variety.com/2012/film/news/cinemanx-to-merge-with-pinewood-shepperton-1118055092/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/cinemanx

http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=59279647

http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b9b74064a

http://deadline.com/2017/02/cinemanx-founder-producer-steve-christian-dies-aged-53-isle-of-man-pinewood-pictures-untitled-aa-milne-project-1201921174/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disappearance_of_Alice_Creed
http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Disappearance-of-Alice-Creed-The#tab=summary

Evaluation Question 3 (Part 1). Which institution would distribute your media product and why?

Being in a dream world, with an unlimited budget and a cast full of stars, which institution would make our film?

Evaluation Task 2. How does your media product represent different social groups?

In the opening sequence "Pravda", there is a stereotypical representation of gender. Ella, the young woman in danger, is the classic female victim who is constantly threatened and scared. This is conveyed by the inevitable sobs and screams she lets out when she is hiding. Her horrified face expression can be seen through camerawork in the right side of the frame, standing out because if the lighting. Although she is dressing in sports clothes, she is wearing quite feminine earrings. She is dependent on the male figure, David. The evidence could be when he tells her to hide and she mumbles, ending the moment with a cry full of emotion: "David!" The organisation the scene, with the props and furniture where they are, contribute to this representation of gender. We see her feet, wearing only socks, and then her crawling under the bed in a very vulnerable position. David seems to be the absolute lead. While Ella stays in the room, lying in bed, he is in charge to go search for blankets because she is cold. He is also extremely protective and runs back to warn her about something out there. He makes sure that she is hiding properly before going to look for a safe place himself. In the fight scene, he is both brave and reckless, trying to fight the extremists back with his bare hands. In the end, he is essentially a typical defeated hero who has done everything he could to try to save his damsel in distress but ends up dying. Even in the moment before he gets shot, he somehow finds time to look at Ella directly, as a silent goodbye.

Ethnicity is also represented stereo-typically. The Russian extremists are viewed as a threat and treated from a viewpoint of lack of knowledge and understanding. They talk in their own language and therefore isolate themselves. The pleonastic sound of their boots walking side to side contributes to the sense of danger that they give off from the beginning. The use of props helps create this image as well, with their guns being visible most of the time as an explicit reminder. The editing in the moment of the gunshot is based on a hyperbole aimed at dramatising the death of the boy and stressing the menace that the terrorists constitute. A second layer with increased brightness in the edges of the objects in the room was added as part of the shock, and two gunshot sounds are overlapped additionally. Although the choice of a one-shot sequence was made because of its complexity and originality and, most importantly, as an alternative of creating tension, in this case it also highlights the feeling of uncertainty and fear as we do not see the extremists' faces in any point. They are just unknown Russians, merely antagonists, and certainly plain characters. This representation is constantly chosen in the media when treating minorities which have been involved in war conflicts previously, like the Nazis in the "Indiana Jones" saga. The ingredient of ignorance always adds up to the general uneasiness when treating with these enemies. Cultural detachment pulls the characters apart.


The lead couple have a conventional straight relationship. Their sexuality is depicted as we can usually find it in media texts: a perfect combination of love, playful jokes and a deep care for each other. They understand what each other wants perfectly and any negative comments always have a comical remark. One example of this is when David complains of "how much (Ella) wriggled last night". He introduces it in the conversation as part of the good-humoured complaints of her towards his attempts of having sex. They are both mocking each other for things that they care about but they do not want to make a big deal out of, as in many TV shows which include couples who argue that way, being positive about whatever they do not like in order to solve it more easily than if they were to get involved in a fight. They understand each other and the dialogue develops fluently. The chemistry between them is obvious in their lines and actions, as well as in sounds like their laughter when they are together on top of the bed. They also perform activities together like going hiking in the mountains, quite ideal, and they dress similarly as a consequence. They are both matching in the dark colours and the fact that they are half undressed: they have already got rid of the winter clothes a boots from the outside. This contributes to set a calm, intimate environment within the hostel room. The choice of lighting, with a yellow-amber quality in the inside and a colder, pale pink in the outside as a reflection in the window is a detail that sets the mood of the stereotypical relationship of David and Ella.


The pleonastic sounds that come from the adjoining rooms are part of this representation of sexuality. The couple next door is mirroring the main action, them being organised in duos of a man and a woman. The man, again, is certainly scared but also protective and full of energy to grasp any opportunity to save both: "Stop it, stop it!", while the woman is simply screaming non-stop until she gets shot three times. This means that, once again, the man is more or less in charge of the situation beyond the fact that he is pleading and his partner can not pull herself together and reacts hysterically.


Overall, the thriller sequence is very stereotypical in terms of representation, which makes the viewer focus more in the bits and pieces which stand out rather than in the background of the story. This is a common strategy to avoid unnecessary distractions and immerse the audience in the plot, especially used in action thrillers. The public gets attached to the characters quickly because they find it easy to identify them; they have seen similar ones a thousand times before. Everything that is left is to see how the situation unravels.

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

Research into Similar Media Products

'Taken' is a 2008 thriller directed by Pierre Morel and produced by Luc Besson. It stars Liam Neeson as a former CIA agent whose teenage daughter is kidnapped by an Albanian gang working on prostitution rings and they give him a deadline of  96 hours to rescue her.

The film bears lots of similarities with our thriller, but the most striking ones are probably the genre, the overall story line, involving an unexpected situation in which someone is killed or kidnapped and also the pursue of revenge as an underlying theme, as well as the type of characters —young people as the vulnerable—, the use of under-the-bed angles in the key kidnapping scene, and the way of creating tension —focusing only in a repeated shot while an unknown danger is approaching—.

'Homeland' is a 2011 TV show developed by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. The production companies behind it are Teakwood Lane, Cherry Pie, Keshet Broadcasting and Fox 21. Claire Danes plays a CIA operations officer who works in the Counter terrorism centre. She is constantly involved in suspenseful situations and finds herself in a complex conspiracy in which she doesn't know who to trust.

It can be compared to our thriller due to the choice of a female heroine as the main character, the genre and the themes related to terrorism, secrecy, and the need to solve a riddle.

'24' is an action-based TV show which was released in the year 2001. Its creators are Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, and it was produced by 20th Century Fox TV, Imagine Entertainment, Real Time Productions and Teakwood Lane. The narrative is quite similar as it focuses on terrorism as the main threat. It is also quite a blockbuster full of action and fighting scenes, which fits with our approach when filming the confrontation between the terrorists and David and Ella.

'The Disappearance of Alice Creed' is a 2009 film directed by J Blakeson and produced by Adrian Sturges. It tells the story of a young woman (Gemma Arterton) who gets kidnapped by an extremely organised duo who keeps her tied up in a room. There are lots of plot twists and nothing is what it seems to be. It is a neo-noir thriller which shares resemblance with ours due to, again, its independent female lead, as well as the parallelism between the two kidnappers and our two terrorists, as well as their initial attitude towards Alice Creed.

'Toy Story 2' is a 1999 Pixar animation film which does not have anything to do with our thriller except for the fact that they used a sequence in which there is a camera angle taken from under a bed which shows time progression. It is really cleverly filmed, especially because of their choice of props in the frame. I believe that it had a massive influence on me when thinking about how to approach Myles' idea in the beginning of the process, unconsciously, because I have watched it so many times. It is undoubtedly a sequence that can be learnt from. Here's the clip of the song "When She Loved Me", with the ending part being the one that stands out in terms of camerawork.

                                                                          (TubeChop)

'The Call' is a 2013 crime thriller film about a kidnapping investigation triggered by a call that Jordan (Halle Berry) from Los Angeles Police Dpt, receives one night. She is guided through a horrible experience by the victim while her captors search for her. It is directed by Brad Anderson, produced by Stage 6 Films and distributed by TriSar. Once again, its key scene involves having the victim under the bed. The choice of angles and how the tension is built up is similar in some details to our original idea.

The last film I'm going to mention is a classic, 'Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark' (1981), created by Spielberg and Lucas. As a whole product, it bears little resemblance with our thriller. However, the way in which the Nazis, as antagonists, are portrayed, is almost identical to our choice with the Russian extremists. It is a relationship of antagonism based in ignorance and fear, with the enemies talking in their own language throughout except for the moments in which they direct their speech to the rest of the characters. They are treated as a collective rather than as individuals, as our terrorists.

Research into Target Audience

When thinking of the potential audience for our thriller, the first aspect to look at is the genre and story line. The plot, as said previously, is basically a terrorist attack taking a young couple by surprise. The movie would have romantic and action elements, but the key to it is the suspenseful feel. The whole film would be about how the female lead manages to escape and, with the help of a detective, carries out a revenge against the terrorist group which murdered her boyfriend. Such film is bound to be interesting only for a certain audience who is interested in violent conflicts and investigations links to them. Our thriller would be essentially fast-paced with some slower sequences combined when the research takes place. It would involve a romantic element throughout, with a possible added story between Ella and the detective, which means that the target audience is broadened, with more women wanting to watch it than if the product was only an action-driven drama.

In general, thrillers with no major intellectually challenging aspects are aimed at relatively young people (around 15-35 years old), especially if what we are talking about is a traditional product like this one, with no ambition as to the organisation of the plot or adding an unexpected twist to it. Our audience would probably come from western countries, especially UK, US and the Mediterranean. Anyway, this kind of film often has international impact because of the commercial theme. 

The hobbies and interests of our potential audience could be almost anything, but watching films, playing video games and performing some kind of sport would definitely be included. Regarding their education and jobs, there could be a wide range of options, from being a student to an accountant. Scientists would most definitely not be very attracted to the whole idea, whereas certain artists would undoubtedly be interested because of the careful choice of cinematography, which is fairly unusual. I would say that adventurers and world travelers could find the film particularly compelling because they would feel identified with the main characters and that feeling of familiarity would probably make them more immersed in the plot and the danger they could themselves be exposed to.  

The income of our target audience is most likely not too substantial, as the effects and technologies we utilise are consumer standard, and the upper classes would probably not be bothered to watch a film about danger and security issues, especially if they are exposed to this problems every day in the media and probably have adapted a distanced pose to it all, even a businesslike approach. The lower and middle classes are more likely to appreciate our thriller, because its inaccuracies would not constitute such a problem to them and they would probably be driven by the adventurous nature of the issue. 

Overall, the film would be aimed at a broad audience as long as they are not especially critical or tight and they appreciate a product with lots of action and mystery rather than a psychological drama, documentary  or pure romance. Even fans of horror films could find ours compelling as suspense is closely linked to it. 

Research into Distribution

A media institution is a company that owns and creates media products. There are several companies in each country and over 300 worldwide, with difference in budget and national/international outreach. The US is the country with most successful institutions, their popularity linked with their economic resources and the years they have been in the industry. Often, the institution that produces the film also markets it, but it can be carried out by distinctive entities. Also, when the company is essentially national, other institutions, if interested, are usually the ones that distribute it in their respective countries. For instance, "Monsters" (2010) was distributed by Vertigo Films in the UK and by Magnet Releasing —which found out about the film during a festival and got captivated— in the US.

Among the main American media institutions, Warner Bros. Columbia, Universal and 20th Century Fox stand out. They are all part of "the Big Eight" in the golden age of Hollywood, sharing in common their high budgets. The 20th Century Fox seems particularly interesting to me regarding this question, as it is the studio which distributed "Taken", a thriller with a similar aesthetic and story line to our sequence. TriStar Pictures is a relatively smaller institution owned by Sony which distributed "The Call" (2013), with its plot revolving around a 911 call in which a girl is desperate for help under a bed. The key scenes also share resemblance with ours.

One of the most common routes for a film for seeking distribution companies is presenting it to a well-known film festival like Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and Toronto. It can be chosen by the various distributors that attend the screenings, belonging to several countries. International sales agents are also extremely relevant. These companies assess upcoming film makers and often have useful relationships with companies and festival organisers. It is a serious and recognised way of presenting a film to the market.

If we look at the most successful independent studios in the UK —although often distributed by companies belonging to the Big Eight—, we have some interesting examples worth considering. 

StudioCanal, leading the data, is a French company which used to collaborate with Universal. It produces a variety of films with ambitious topics —lots of controversial psychological thrillers— so it is maybe too risky to think about it as an option to distribute our film. About eOne Films, it operates especially in Canada, UK, Australia, Benelux and Spain. It is quite varied in its choices, but most of the films it distributes are low to medium budget and end up constituting a success. 

http://www.litnotes.co.uk/institutions.htm
http://es.slideshare.net/MonicaGameiro/researching-film-institutions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Century_Fox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuropaCorp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_distributors_by_country#Australia
http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/resources/distribution
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution.htm
https://stephenfollows.com/who-dominates-uk-film-distribution/
http://uk.eonefilms.com/home