The character on the left, in the above image, is a a member of my group posed as George Matthews, the protagonist of my thriller. The image on the right is actor Daniel Radcliffe, posed as the fictional character of Harry Potter. Although the genres of my film and the Harry Potter films are completely different, the way in which the characters are shaped are very similar. Harry Potter is a average boy who lives in a house in England. There is not much drama in his life, it is rather boring and normal. In the same sense, George Matthews also lives a relatively normal, uneventful life. But both these characters are unaware of the drama that has been unfolding behind their backs their whole lives: in Harry's world, the whole of the wizarding world knew that he was a wizard, apart from himself; in George's world, he has been constantly watched by an old lady, but of course, unbeknown to him. Harry Potter's world is turned upside down when he find out that he is a wizard, and this information was conveyed to him by a particular person. George Matthew's life is also thrown into chaos when he realises that there is predator out to get him. I have chosen to compare the character of George Matthews to that of Harry Potter to covey the idea that when normality is disrupted, drama is created.
This short, 8 minute film is a low budget film, made by a student in university. He uploaded it on to YouTube and he got 42,001 views and a lot of positive comments. People are still watching this film, as its last comment was 5 days ago. He has used the internet to launch his movie to a wider audience. At first the movie was, probably within the university but then he might of decided to get a larger and wider audience. This movie might get spotted by a director and he might want to make a big film out of the basic outline. He could use the internet to distribute and market his movie and potentially reach a global audience. People can use the internet to advertise and sell their product for a reasonable price, sometimes for free on websites like Vimeo and YouTube.
A Clip from the final product- 'Goodnight Sleep Tight'
In our match cut we tried to capture a close-up of the characters' feet and hands to show suspense because the audience will not see the whole body, only parts of it, which will question them as to who it is? The close-up of the hand on the door handle was good I thought but compared to the close-up shot of the fan in our final product does not look too effective. In the match cut, the close-up of the hand in the centre of the shot shows a clearer picture, however it would have looked better if the camera was more close up or if it was shot from a different angle. With the shot of the fan, the camera angle captures the top part of the fan which shows some light coming through from the window as it spins around. This looks effective as the audience can see only a part of what is being shot making it look more spooky, thus creating suspense. I have learnt how to position the camera much better from the match cut to the final product and I have learnt what the 180 degrees rule is. When editing the match cut, I found it quite difficult editing and putting the shots together as I was new to using Final Cut Pro. However now, I am better aware of how to import and export clips and how to edit clips on Final Cut Pro. One of the shots in the match cut which I really liked was the close-up of the feet. I really found this shot effective as it was placed on a low angle which made the character's feet seem big, connoting power and dominance. Overall, I thought the match cut exercise gave me a little taster of what is expected of me to do in producing the final product. I learnt how to shoot a match cut and had experience filming with thecamera as well as filming different shots such as medium close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots; this helped me to feel more confident using the cameras and more aware of what to do.
When we were making the opening of Goodnight, Sleep Tight, we were heavily influenced by the opening of Se7en. When we first watched Se7en's opening, we found that it was rather good at creating a disturbed feeling in the audience, something we wanted to do with our opening. We managed to achieve this by having a montage of images and clips rather than a narrative opening.
Not only is it influenced visually, but the soundtrack used is quite similar as well. We liked the idea of having eerie, distant noises over actual music, and I believe we managed to create a good score thanks to various effects and samples from Soundtrack Pro.
To release my film, I would use youtube.com. This is because youtube.com attracts a real, global audience. As my film is low budget and a student film, not many real institutions will buy it or distribute it. However, youtube.com enables students to upload their work for free and there are many student films that do in fact gain massive, global audiences. One example of this would be 'SMILE':
This is an extremely successful student film. It has over 443,000 views in youtube.com and numerous comments left by viewers, mostly positive ones. This film has reached a real audience, just as a formally released, professional film would have. Youtube.com would definitely be great way to distribute my film because it would enable me to showcase my work on a global scale - something that wasn't possible for a student before the online age! It would also be preferable financially as I would not have to pay for copyrighting, nor would I have to worry about the funds for up-keeping it. As a downside, I won't be getting any profit either!
I have many ideas about how I would market my film to my target audience. My target audience is mainly young people between the ages of 16 and 24 - this is because the protagonist of my film is a young male. As I attend college, I would begin to advertise there first. I wold create posters and print them in college and post them around various parts of the college, in particular the notice boards and in the media department. I would also upload a youtube.com link onto my facebook account, enabling my friends on facebook to have an easy access to my film. I have actual experience of some of my friends who have done this via facebook - they gained a large audience through this. As I have absolutely no funding to do any more advertising/promoting, I would also rely heavily on the word of mouth. Judging by the audience feedback, most of the audience enjoyed my film opening: this means that the people who enjoyed my work could talk about it and promote it to their friends and family. I would also advertise it to my own friends and family and assign them to help me promote it via the word of mouth and through their own social networking accounts.
This student film has had a massive 3,700 views on YouTube.
The video still has been having views recently as the latest comment on YouTube
about this video was posted 4 days ago:(it looks like lady gaga gone vampire :P lmao). As this short film is a low budget film, it starts of its promotion by embedding in onto local popular websites such as YouTube, so that it can be seen by as many people as possible. i think by putting it on YouTube raises awareness of the film because there are many links between these sorts of websites, which can help to inform others about the film. Also, by putting the opening as a little preview on chat rooms such as face book, this can help to benefit the makers of the film because young people are mainly the target audience for student films. So by sending out messages on face book to all friends would help to encourage people to visit YouTube or any other websites in which they must have put it up on to go view it. Also When a group of people or friends are all talking about a matter, for example the short film, this will persuade others to go and see it because it seem to be very popular with the people they know.. By targeting just a few viewers, encourages others to watch it thus becoming a wider audience all in time.
This short film is similar to our thriller opening as it is a low budget student film and it cannot afford to target a mainstream audience like 'Star Trek'. For 'Goodnight Sleep Tight' I would target the audience in several ways in which I know will not be too costly. Firstly, I would email or text my friends and family to inform them about our opening. I would tell them the possible websites that I put the video up on (YouTube, Face book, Vimeo) so that they could go and have a look.
I would give the viewers an option to give a small amount of money to us if they enjoyed the opening and want to see more because their funding can help us to make the rest of the film. I would also get most of my family together and have a little screening in my house or maybe hire a liitle cinema and invite most of the people I know including my friends and family. If I know I have less people expected to come than the full capacity in which the cinema can hold, I will spend some time making little leaflets and hand them out to people who I see walking along in the streets who are interested and i will inform them that it is a free event in which they do not have to pay for a ticket. However, I will encourage them to pay a little sum to make the rest of the film, only if they enjoy it at the end of opening and this will be harder to refuse after having a free screening and being asked face to face. However, before I do this, I would need to get as many viewers as possible to have a wider audience who are all interested and almost begging to see more! This will make them want to pay however much to ensure that they are promised to see the completed film very soon! Because it will be a free event, random people are more likely to attend and this can help me to promote the opening via word of mouth.
I will also try to get a local DVD shop to play our opening so that when customers come in, this can attract them thus helping to get a bigger funding for the making of the rest of the film. I will make posters and stick them up where i get permission to and make an arrangement with some local shopkeepers to hand out leaflets to customers. The aim to get 'Goodnight Sleep Tight' into cinemas will be to attract a local audience at first and hopefully make enough money from the funding as possible in order to make the rest of the film and potentially reach a global audience!
This is a 'word cloud' made of the feedback from our thriller opening. To create this, we collected the feedback of our opening and inserted them into a special website called www.wordle.net, which merged our reviews together to create the above image. The audience feedback was generally positive: as we can see, the words 'tension, 'diegetic', 'clear', 'psychological', 'shots', 'dreams' and 'enjoyed' are all particularly prominent in the word cloud. This is really positive as tension was something that we were definitely trying to denote, as well as the fact that our thriller is a psychological one. It is also very important that the word 'dreams' came up as this shows us that the audience understood what situation our opening was trying connote. I was particularly happy with the comments about the shots that we used: not only did our teachers commend the range of shots used, but our classmates also commended the quality of the shots that we filmed. Another very interesting thing that the audience picked up on and appreciated was our use of diegetic sound at the beginning of the opening; this really helped to denote a sense of normality, which was then disturbed by the dream, which thus created drama - we were very happy about the fact that this had an impact on the audience. In the above image, the word 'time' can be seen: some of the audience commented on the fact that the opening is a little short in length. This could be seen as negative feedback and at first, I thought that it was. However, I have now realised that the fact that it is not too long adds a sense of being a cliff-hanger, which creates tension and suspense, the two elements that spur a person on to watch a movie.
