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.

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