Final thriller opening sequence: Pravda

Evaluation Task 7. Looking back at your Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learned in the process from it to the full product?

Evaluation Task 6. What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

What have we learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have created some annotations on top of our uploaded video in order to explain how we utilised different technologies for our media text.

Evaluation Task 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

How did we attract our audience?

Our film, "Pravda", is an action thriller, which is quite a common and commercial genre which usually does not require that much intellect. However, our movie has slight alterations to the genre that make the piece more original and demanding for the average viewer. "Taken" and "The Call" are sources of inspiration for our final idea and, taking into account that they were successful films —the first earning 226.8M and the latter, 68.6M—, we could definitely use them as part of a marketing strategy to attract the type of audience that enjoyed these. 

The setting is very appealing because it sticks to the conventions of our genre. It could be described as a gruesome, quite realistic looking hostel room. The lighting contributes a lot in setting the mood and atmosphere that makes our thriller successful. It is quite dim but clear enough to see every detail that is essential to understand the story and keep the audience engaged. There are some purple lights showing through the only window, which adds a modern touch to the whole set and suggests the kind of place that is surrounding the cabinet. I think that, overall, the image that we give off is certainly close to a professional level, surely competent, and should be a key way of grasping the public's attention. Adding to this, the choice of using a hostel room as the location is clever because it is easily identifiable by our predominantly young audience, who have probably stayed in similar places. It helps reinforcing the tension element because the viewers could end up imagining themselves in the same situation as our protagonists. It is not an alienated environment, it is a run-of-the-mill hostel and an evening in peace which is destroyed by the appearance of a group of terrorists, a story which is sadly common nowadays and we are constantly being bombarded with in the media.

The story is driven by a common situation nowadays, as I already pointed out, Two innocent young people caught up in a deadly situation in which they get attacked by intimidating extremists. Moreover, the youngsters are in love, which rises the dramatism and definitely attracts many viewers, especially female if we rely on stereotypes. Thinking about narrative elements, it is worth mentioning that we chose to introduce a cliffhanger in the ending. Will the Russians kill our female protagonist, Ella, or will she manage to escape?

The titles are simple but elegant. They are based on two colours that work perfectly together and are quite a recurrent choice, black and white, and the font does not give away too much of the plot but it is revealing in the sense that the sleek style, a bit classic, is related to the suspenseful element of our thriller. The progression is simple, edited only with fade in and fade out rather than choosing a really distinctive effect that would probably distract the audience. Everything is paved for them to understand and get immersed in the plot rather than have unnecessary complications. The order of the titles is carefully thought, as after the pertinent institutions, we go straight into the director and our young stars which are supposed to ring a bell in the viewers' heads and make them want to watch their idols in leading roles if we were talking ideally of well known actors.

The music is not intended to add much to the characters' actions because there is already enough going on in the scene, and the dialogues —almost constant— need to be understood clearly in order to get the sense of every person's motives. Of course, there are occasional sound effects an riffs to build up the tension, but the music is never intrusive. The style is traditional, using the same strategies that have been chosen thousands of times before us in masterpieces. But the thing is that it works, that's why there is such tradition. Also, our audience is not especially demanding and they enjoy products that do not challenge their views of the world too much. We are already being innovative and risking their approval by the choice of cinematography —a continuous shot which demands some patience and intellectual curiosity—.

The pace of the action is quite quick, it intending to be a portrayal of a real situation that would probably happen over a longer period of time. Everything has been condensed in order to establish everyone's roles effectively and tell the story with clarity, though not trying to recreate every moment  a hundred per cent realistically, which would be more of a characteristic of an indie film. Of course, the only editing we did was removing the beginning and ending parts of the good footage we had, but, as it is a whole continuous sequence, there are no cuts.

Taking into account that our viewers would be young people with an interest in going to the cinema, doing sports, nature and watching the news, I believe that we have done as much as we could to make our product address them. We have taken a common disaster which often appears on the news and transformed it into a gripping thriller sequence for them to enjoy and re-watch to grasp every detail that we carefully planned all the way through.