'Mirage' Final Product

Evaluation Questions 6 & 7

Evaluation Questions 6&7 
 6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the main task?


 

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

 

 

Evaluation Question 4 - Who would be the audience for you media product?

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our media audience would most likely be the age demographic of 15 years and over due to the mature subject matter that surrounds the film. People who are under the age of 15 may not understand or be interested in the film due to their lack of understanding and interest in the British government and politics. Although our film is entirely fiction and human testing is almost certainly not being used by the government, there is still a deep-lying political consciousness surrounding the film, so we feel that this will intrigue the minds of people aged over 15.

 

Although our film is aimed at all people over the ages of 15, I feel like the supernatural element may alienate older audience who are not interested in films like ours. This is due to the completely fictional aspect of our film with the combination of human testing and the supernatural element of the entity that our protagonist sees. The slight horror element due to the mystery surrounding the supernatural character may categorise our film as a “horror-thriller”, again alienating the older audiences who do not get as much of a thrill from being scared. I feel like an older audience may be more interested in films that have a chance of being plausible, however I feel ours passes this boundary. For this reason I would state that our key demographic would be the age range of 15-45.

 

Finally, I feel like the slight action element to the film may disinterest female viewers and would appeal more to the male audience. I do not feel like there would be a huge gender split, but feel like their would be slightly more males interested in our films. I also feel like the graphic nature may also scare off the female viewers due to the gore scenes which may occur. This is a rather stereotypical view that women are more squeamish than men when it comes to gore and may not like watching films of that nature, but I do feel that it may stop some more female viewers than male viewers watching our film.

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

I think that 'Studio Canal UK' may distribute our film due to their prior collaborations with 'Warp Films'. They distributed the films ''71' as well as 'Four Lions' and 'Dead Man's Shoes', which were created by 'Warp Films'. This shows that the company has prior experience with distributing independent films so would understand the market. The fact that they also distributed 'Dead Man's Shoes' and 'Four Lions' shows that the company are willing to take risks with films, as long as they like the content that they have seen, due to the graphic nature of 'Dead Man's Shoes' and the controversial terrorism satire used in 'Four Lions'. This means that if there were to be any gore or violence in our film, then they would most likely still go ahead and distribute our product. I do not think that 'Studio Canal' are as fixated on profit as a huge conglomerate like 'Warner Bros.' are either. The evidence in this is that 'Dead Man's Shoes' had a budget of £723,000 yet only grossed £101,186, yet they decided to distribute further projects of 'Warp Films' after this film. I think that this shows that 'Studio Canal' are more focused on the quality of a film and the accolades it receives than the intake in profits that they receive. 'Warner Bros.' may not be the best choice for our film as they would be more driven on making as much money as possible so some aspects of our film may need to be changed in order to appeal to a wider audience, such as our actor being changed from Matt Wells to an American actor.

I feel like 'Studio Canal' may be interested in our film due to the independence it has and the specific market that it may interest. The psychological aspect of our film may interest 'Studio Canal' due to the niche market that it would appeal to, and due to the fact that a fairly similar film in 'Donnie Darko' not only received positive reviews, but also made profit. This is a similar film to ours, however our film still is very different to this film and has it's own unique ideas, so I feel like this may interest them. 'Studio Canal UK' are also obviously a British film production company so we would have greater chance with getting them to distribute our film than a huge American conglomerate, as 'Studio Canal' would enjoy seeing British films being made so would have no problems with sticking to a British setting and cast, and would possibly prefer this.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

Work on production company titling

We have made minor changes to our production company logo, and we have changed the font of the title "Zenith Productions". Adding the Crooked Spire to our logo is a work in progress, as we are trying to find a subtle way to add it to the logo.

Bad weather; no filming

Our group had planned to film on the weekend of 31st January, however due to the snowy conditions, the school was closed on Thursday the 29th January and Friday the 30th January. This meant that we were unable to collect any of our equipment and were therefore unable to film. We have rescheduled for Saturday and Sunday the 7th and 8th of February.

Production Logo

We were have been working on the logo for our production company, and we decided that we needed to make the designs dark and mysterious to suit the thriller aspect of our company. We settled with the name "Zenith Productions", as the term zenith means the highest point or most powerful and successful. We thought that this would be a  suitable name for a company, as it shows the desire and ambition of our company. The name relates to our target audience, as it is aimed at people 15 years or older, as younger people would not understand the term "zenith".

We created a draft for our logo in which we decided to use a silhouette of the Crooked Spire. We thought this would work well as our film is thriller aimed and needs to set a dark and mysterious atmosphere, which I think the logo does. We also designed the so that the "Zenith" is vertical, and the "Productions" is horizontal, with the letter "I" in the words creating a connection between the two. We did this because it links with the name of "Zenith" and visually shows the viewer the height symbolism.

Here is the first draft of the logo:

Here is the updated draft with a change in the font:

Thriller final Title and Plot

Title

We were unsure of what to name our thriller at the time, due to lack of creativity, so we used an online thesaurus and typed in two key words which our thriller was based on. These key words were "political illusion" which got changed to "Constitutional Mirage". The name seemed too long for a title, and may have confused a potential audience for our film, so we changed the title to our film to simply "Mirage". We felt that this suited the film really well, as our protagonist is unsure whether the figure he is seeing a real or a hallucination.

Plot

The film focuses upon a young man who has took a job for the government, which he is ecstatic about because it is a high paying job. The job isn't all that he thinks, as it turns out he has been transferred to a human testing division, before getting tested on himself. He manages to escape but starts suffering from several hallucinations, which he is unsure whether they are real or not. He also suffers from flash-backs during his escape, which lets the audience establish what he has been through, and where he has escaped from. The escape and the flashbacks will be the opening two minutes of our thriller.

Thriller Storyboard

We created a storyboard so that the plan of our thriller is clear and laid out for us, and not only shows others what our thriller is going to be about, but also makes it much easier for us to plan what is going to happen on the day. The use of describing which camera angles to use and drawing a picture of what we expect is to look like makes it a lot easier for us to envisage what we want the shots to look like.

Below is our storyboard: