Final Production

This is the video of our final production. We as a group are very happy with the video and hope that you enjoy watching it.





By Joseph Mulhare, Kerry Sheehan, Helen Daniel and Jack Partridge

Character choices

This is our protagonist. We have decided to choose jack as our protagonist because he is an “average”, “everyday” person, who has an “everyman” persona who represents the majority of people in the country. We feel that these characteristics are ideal for our protagonist as we wanted the audiences to relate to him and feel as if they could be the protagonist rather than just watching the film. One other reason why we chose jack was because our thriller is about isolation and putting an everyday person in a situation that would make them vulnerable. The combination of the character and the location, we feel, gives a situation that would attract our target audience.

By Joseph Mulhare

Our Poster

After much deliberation we finally decided on “Pandemic” as the name of our thriller. We decided that a poster to promote our thriller would be appropriate as it could allow the target market to acknowledge the thriller. The font of Pandemic along with it being in white emphasises the clinical feel to the film. This combined with the biological hazard sign that has been partially blurred out in the back ground that suggests to the audience the nature of this film has a connection with some form of scientific disaster. The tone of yellow used connotates alarm, and warning within the film. Collaborated with the deep red of the tagline and ‘BEWARE’ again stimulates the audience in to associating the colour red with danger, fear and death. Having the release date of the film portrayed to the audience as a warning again reemphasis’s the danger within the film. The words ‘BEWARE’ also scare the audience of the release date. The emptiness of the black background suggests there is something out there that will be later reviled.

By Helen Daniel

Brief

Our task, as year 12 media studies students, was to make the opening two minutes of a thriller. We had to research other thrillers, annotate them and write them as a blog. We then had film our thriller and edit it, writing blogs about our experiences and techniques we used. Our final part of the task was to write an evaluation of the whole project. Throughout we have had to use as many different types of media as possible. This meant we had to think carefully about how to express our work. Because we had to do this we thought of many different ways to show our work, for example instead of making a questionnaire we filmed a focus group.

By Joseph Mulhare

Editing Diary

After we got our raw footage we then had to edit the footage to make sure it made sense and would appeal to our target audience. To edit the footage we use a programme called pinnacle studio, this software is a basic package but was ideal for the task we had been set. The software is industry standard and was made for editing home videos, which is basically what we were using.

So that we could edit to a high standard we were showed how to use pinnacle by year 13’s who had used the software the previous year and had good experience using the software, meaning we could then edit ourselves and to practise we had to produce a preliminary task which included:
• Over the shoulder shot
• Match on action
• Shot reverse shot
• Not to break the 180o rule
The time spent editing here was when we made mistakes as it was our first time using the software. Also our preliminary didn’t look as professional as our finished production as we were told to get all the “silly urges” out of our system and ready for our final production. Because we had this small task to do it gave us enough experience to produce a thriller to a high standard.

Through out our time editing we didn’t have many problems as we had used the software before to edit our preliminary task. Therefore we knew how to use the programme and edit successfully. However we did have some problems, mainly when uploading our footage, these problems occurred because some of the equipment we had was old, had been misused and wasn’t in good condition, mainly the camera docks and cables used to upload footage. After finding new and correct equipment we had no further problems with uploading.

Once we had edited our footage and included a title sequence we then had to burn the film to a DVD CD. This was simple because of the way the software was set out and didn’t take much time at all compared to the rest of the task.

By Joseph Mulhare

Focus Groups

A focus group is a form of qualitive research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea or packaging.

Hendeson, Naomi R (2009)

Focus Group - Target Audience

We have decided to conduct a focus group as it is a form of qualitative research that will allow us to gain their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes towards our thriller ensuring that we captivate the audience. If our thriller was to be advertised we would also have the knowledge of the best way to market and promote it, for example the television channels the trailer would be viewed on.
The Advantages
Since the people who will participate in the focus group will all be within the target audience age group, their input and views are up to date and relevant to us. Having them express their opinions amongst one another allows a variety of ideologies to be considered. This in turn will be more beneficial to us as we are able to customize our thriller around what they want.
The Disadvantages
However there are several drawbacks in undertaking a focus group. Within a small number of people, one or two individual’s ideologies may dominate, and as a consequence of this the whole objective of a focus group will become irrelevant. A similar effect can occur if friends are asked to participate in the focus group as they are more prone to give the response that you wish to hear, meanwhile others may give you the opposite which can also have a negative outcome.

By Helen Daniel

Permission - 2

It was originally thought that next to no permission was needed when filming however when we got to our location on the first day of filming we incurred several problems as permission was needed from one of the building owners. This resulted in us being unable to shoot the minority of our thriller. We had to resolve this by emailing, Lloyds to ask for permission to shoot on their premises. As shown below:

Helen Daniel