Abduction: Film

Finalised Poster

Following the research into both posters for psychological thrillers swell as the audience feedback which we have used, below is the final design which we have used as part of our ancillary texts.

Abduction: Evaluation 4

Abduction: Evaluation 3

Transcript:

Audience Feedback has played a prominent role within the creation of our media product and helped us through many stages of our media production, the first of these stages was following our initial idea which was a plot which revolved around a man receiving an unknown briefcase and then being hunted down by two supernatural twin entities until finally he was able to kill one but the other one would reveal himself at the end in a dramatic twist that there were actually two antagonists the entire time. This plot was very much overly ambitious and required many actors and numerous locations and even a choreographed fight scene, and whilst i had felt this was a good idea at the time albeit difficult to shoot following showing others the storyboards for this film and their feedback that the plot felt convoluted and did not adhere to the forms and conventions I had established of short films. It was clear that a new idea would be needed and at this point our group came up with the concept of ‘Abduction”which was following the audience feedback was a lot simpler with a lot less characters and locations. Following the creation of this concept and some brief test footage, we decided to take a second sample of audience testing following extensive research into who our likely demographic would be. We then created a survey which we distributed to those who had seen the test footage with responses being a lot more positive than our initial feedback. This batch of audience feedback proved pivotal as through the feedback it was clear many felt our protagonist was too young to believably be a husband and so we adhering to this feedback re drafted our script replacing the husband with a son in order to make it more believable.

Once this closed feedback was done we then decided to make use of social media as a platform for audience feedback, most notably Facebook, by creating a group on Facebook with several people who fell into our target audience demographic. This gave us a larger sample size of our target market and through this we were able to have a constant source of audience feedback very much akin to crowd sourcing websites, Following the feedback of the survey we then gave a draft of our script with the amendments which had previously been sent. This was met with resounding approval highlighting to our group that we were on the right track. We then used audience feedback to shape our ancillary texts, most notably the poster, When creating the poster we were uncertain as to which image would resonate the most with our target audience and following our research into the conventional movie posters we narrowed it down to two key images the first of which was our protagonist lying on the sofa and the second was our protagonist standing at the bulletin board. Following the poll it was apparent that the image which resonated with our target audience the most was our protagonist at the bulletin board.

Overall audience feedback has shaped our media production from the very beginning of our media production through to the end. From the audience feedback i have learnt a great deal in regards to the advantages of having audience feedback and how it can be used as a tool when creating media productions, i have also learnt the advantages and benefits of using analytics to determine key demographics and also how effective they can be. I have also learnt how crowd sourcing techniques can benefit media productions and they would not be possible without todays online society.

Abduction: evaluation 2

Transcript:
Throughout our media production one of our main objectives was to create a full media product in which all aspects compliment one another, once we had finalised our idea of “Abduction” and it had been filmed our main task was to create ancillary texts which not only complemented but enhanced our overall media product. Prior to creating the poster we first had to establish the key elements of posters within our media production’s genre, through doing this we found that they mainly consisted of dark ominous colours which contrasted with lighter aspects within the image and thusly would captivate the audience’s attention, and to further this we made the quotes which praise our film in a bright colour contrasting against the dark vignette surrounding our central image.



Synergy between our main product and our ancillary texts was of paramount importance to us, Through incorporating stills of our film throughout the review we also serve to capture the viewers attention whilst the large golden stars provide a quick summary of the reviews opinions, this quick summary was one of the key elements which we had found from our research into film reviews,


 one of the other key aspects was the use of emphatic language and unique similes which serve to add a personal touch to the review, this use of emphatic words in turn provided us with unique quotes with which we could surround our poster.


 The central image of our poster is also a direct still from our film however it is also ominous in nature serving to highlight the element of mystery whilst also providing a brief insight into what our media production may consist of without giving away any key elements of the plot. We also throughout the review hint at pivotal scenes within the film in ways which we hope will gain audience attention, we also make use of a similar title font in all three of our media products in order to create a form of brand synergy.

Abduction: Evaluation 1

Transcript of Evaluation question one:

Throughout the course of filming “Abduction” we knew that in order to create a media product which we felt was of a high quality we would have to address the forms and conventions of other real media products within the same genre as our media product, In our case this was the Psychological thriller genre, Through our research into this genre we had to establish some key elements of this genre and also of Short films in general in order to create a media product which was true to our task. In order to do this we began to look at various different psychological thrillers such as Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” through looking at this film we established that psychological thrillers very much deal with the protagonists sanity this is an idea we begin to explore within our media production and is mainly done through our protagonists friend, an ancillary character who in many respects, represents society and how they would view a man in our protagonists situation as crazy and would not believe him, whilst we incorporate this convention within our film we also challenge it. We challenge this convention as in the end our protagonist is in fact abducted highlighting to us a viewer that he was in fact sane and did not need to question his own sanity near the climax of the film, this was conveyed when he began to tear down his notice board. Another convention which we use within our film is that of using filters to convey different mental states, this is a convention which we use within our media project with the dark blue filter used to highlight our protagonists bleak outlook and mental state, this then stands in contrast with the natural lighting of our ancillary character and also with our protagonist after he has sought help from his father. Our film however is not only a psychological thriller but is also a short film and as such following research into short films we established a series of forms and conventions for short films, One of the most notable conventions of short films would have to be the incorporation of a plot twist usually in the climax of the film, this is a convention which we strongly adhere to within our media production as we have our protagonist denounce his belief in aliens only for the twist to be that he was right all along although he finds out through his own abduction. Another Convention which we had established within Short films was the minimal use of characters and also locations, This convention in some aspects we do adhere to however we also develop it as rather than have every character reside on screen as we have not only our protagonist’s father reside off screen with the only contact being through a phone, we also have our alien the primary antagonist for the film preside off screen allowing us to create a sense of mystery within our film working in tandem with the convention of psychological thrillers that there must be a sense of mystery which we further expand upon by having our film begin with an ominous opening sequence which feels almost separate from the narrative which we are telling. Through having our Alien reside off screen we are also challenging forms and conventions of traditional modern science fiction films which place these elements at the forefront and boast large special effects driven sequences, another convention of science fiction films which we challenge is that they do not necessarily have to take place in “a galaxy far far away” with outlandish futuristic societies we instead adopt a more grounded approach similar to smaller science fiction films such as “ Ex Machina” where in the science fiction element is very much subtle for the most point with the main focus being on the character interactions rather than large scale sequences. Our film however does play into the convention that many science fiction films such as terminator 2 have which is that the person who believes in the existence of the science fiction entity  is lauded as being crazy or mentally ill by those within society until they too see it at which point the protagonist is accepted into society, however where our film differs is that our protagonist never receives recognition from the society that he in fact was correct but rather he conforms to societies belief that he is troubled mentally and therefore in a way we challenge this convention.

Soundtrack

Following the soundtrack inspiration, We then created a soundtrack using various instruments from garageband and also by using a midi keyboard for the synthetic sounds.