Audience feedback

We decided to record some audience feedback for our film in order to see what is good about the sequence and what could be improved.  We organised a time and date for a screening in the media block, using our posters and a facebook group to advertise it.  We had a turnout of over thirty people which suggests that in terms of audience feedback, our advertising could be considered successful.  We allowed our audience first to watch the sequence the whole way through without filling out the questionnaire so that they could fully engage with the sequence atleast once.  We then screened the sequence again, this time asking the audience to fill out the questionnaires.  These were there responses.

As you can see we recieved very positive feedback, from a wide range of the lower end of our target audience although there were some things we could have improved on. Please check our individual blogs for our individual feedback on this.

Colour Grading Research: Underworld Awakening

As we are currently starting to finish the basic edit and focus on the smaller details now, we have decided to do some research into colour grading.

We want to use the colour wheel on premiere to give the film a blue tint, to make it seem colder and therefore more menacing.

We found an example of an action film that has similar blue grading: Underworld Awakening. This film is similar to ours in genre (although it has horror and fantasy elements as well) and the fact that it has a female hero. As you can see in the image and clip below the blue colours makes her character seem harder, tougher and more sleek and professional.

However this clip is slightly too strong in it's colour grading in our opinion and we would be more subtle in our film, as we don't want it to be noticeable, just to influence the audience's impression of Lotus and the events taking place subconsciously.The snapshot below (from the same film) is more illustrative of the type of grading we might use.

Audience Research

Having decided on a target audience the group asked me to do some research into our audience:
Target audience: 16-24 Male and female


I found the BFI's 2011 statistics yearbook which focused on the year 2010.
Here are some statistics I found:

As this data shows we have chosen a lucrative audience, as they visit the cinema the most. We have also chosen a good genre to target them with as many action films (e.g Kick Ass, Inception, Iron Man 2) made the list of the most popular films within that age group.

However the thriller aspect of the film might appeal to the 25-34 demographic more as the most popular film for them was Green Zone, a thriller. Most of our film is action however, but the 25-34 year olds could well be a strong secondary audience.

Genre research

Here some research into our two main genres from Wikipedia:

Thriller
Thriller (also Suspense) is a broad genre of literature, film, and television programming that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements. Thrillers heavily stimulate the viewer's moods giving them a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and/or terror. Thriller films tend to be adrenaline-rushing, gritty, rousing and fast-paced. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is villain-driven plot, whereby he or she presents obstacles that the hero must overcome.

The primary elements of the thriller genre:

• The central protagonist(s) faces death, either their own or somebody else's.
• The force(s) of antagonism must initially be clever and/or stronger than the protagonist's.
• The main storyline for the protagonist is either a quest or a character who cannot be put down.
• The main plotline focuses on a mystery that must be solved.
• The film's narrative construction is dominated by the protagonist's point of view.
• All action and characters must be credibly realistic/natural in their representation on screen.
• The two major themes that underpin the thriller genre are the desire for justice and the morality of individuals.
• One small, but significant, aspect of a thriller is the presence of innocence in what is seen as an essentially corrupt world.
• The protagonist/s and antagonist/s may battle not just on a physical level, but on a mental one as well.
• Either by accident or their own curiousness, characters are dragged into a dangerous conflict or situation that they are not prepared to resolve.

Action
Action genre is where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases. They occasionally have a resourceful character struggling against incredible odds such as, life-threatening situations, an evil villain, and/or being chased in several ways of transportation (car, bus, truck, etc.), with victory achieved at the end after difficult physical efforts and violence. Story and character development are generally secondary to explosions, fist fights, gunplay and car chases.

Dexter Inspiration

Just like this openign we want the audience to straight away feel unease by the mans pleasures. Instead we will have close up shots of thing such as drugs, money, knives, gory food and cigarettes and alcohol. Also since this is a drama series we will make it more movie like we will have cut-away titles.

Inspirational clips on female assassins

Through varied meeting during this week we researched a lot on our key topic of female assassins, and what kind of film it will be. here are most of our inspirations, which gav eus our idea for having a female assassin film.


From this film we had the strong sense of what kind of assassin she would be in our film.


we had the inspirational idea of our title from this movie, as her name means something to her, we aslo wanted our character to have a meaning full name. we first researched which flowers represeent revenge; as just like the character in colombiana, our reason for our woman becoming an assassin was that she wanted revenge. Instead we came across Lotus which means chsity and purity. this is ironic as she is a killer but we see it as a sense where she is trying to get her purity back as she kills men that have done her wrong in her past and finds all men a target.


We thought this young female assassin was highly skilled, and we didnt want our assassin to be too old or too young however.


From this movie we thought about having a scene of the assassin in action but in black and white, as though her whole persona changes when she is on a mission, changing the film setting completely.


This is a tv sereis which has this assassin often in different disguises, we thought about having two looks for the assassin in the begginning: one before she kills her target and one when leaving the scene of the crime.

These are more movies on female assassins:

Research: Leon The Professional

To start our research we brainstormed some genres we might want to try. Nico suggested watching the trailer of this film because he'd seen the film and it was a good example of a ganster thriller film which a genre we were thinking of researching. It gave us some inspiration for film ideas if we decide to go down this route.