Tuesday 27 February 2018
Thursday 15 February 2018
Monday 12 February 2018
Prop List
February 12th 2018
In preparing for our filming date, we had to come up with a list of props that we will be using and may need to purchase in order to include them in our film. Below is the list of props we have already got or plan to purchase for the making of our film:
In preparing for our filming date, we had to come up with a list of props that we will be using and may need to purchase in order to include them in our film. Below is the list of props we have already got or plan to purchase for the making of our film:
- Knives - Items available at location.
- Knife Sharpener - Item available at location.
- Knives Rack/Holder - Item available at location.
- Files - We're going to use school files and cover them with a backing showing genders and ages in categories of clients.
- Coffee cup - Item available at location.
- Kettle - Item available at location.
- Poison Bottle - We are going to use a 'Hotel Chocolat Cocoa Gin' bottle which is 250ml, and replace the label with one that will indicate that it is a poisonous liquid.
- Wine Glasses - Items available at location.
- Wine Bottle (filled with dilute juice) - Items available at location; however, we will purchase a red juice such as Ribena from the local shop to fill the bottle with.
- Fake Blood - We need fake blood which won't stain the tile floor in our filming location or the skin of our actor/actress, so we have found a popular recipe used in theatres which is a non-staining fake blood that looks realistic. The ingredients and tools needed for this will be in much more detail in my blog post on how we made the fake blood. We will have to purchase multiple items such as 1x bottle of blue washing up liquid, 4x bottle of red washing up liquid, sugar free peanut butter, sugar free chocolate syrup, washable red poster paint, washable blue poster paint and washable brown poster paint. This roughly cost us £24 in total, which was split evenly between the group.
- Dinner Plate - Items available at location.
- Knives and Forks - Items available at location.
- Pasta (Meal) - The food will be available on location and can be used to feed the cast and crew as well - we need a jar of puttanesca sauce, chicken or Quorn and linguine, as well as herbs/spices.
- Recipe for Poppy Puttanesca - We will be using recipe books and printing out new covers for them as props lying in the kitchen, and we will also alter a chicken puttanesca recipe to make it suitable. We will print this off. This is the recipe which we will be altering;
- Mobile Phone - Items available at location.
- Telephone - Items available at location.
- Computer/Pens/Paperwork - All available at office location.
- Shopping bag filled with groceries and suspicious items - We're going to use empty shopping bags and fill them with items from Eimir's fridge and cabinets, and add suspicious items such as knives. These will all be available on location.
- Candles - Available on location.
- Photo frames of victims & murder weapons - Photo frames will be available at our location as well as a mantlepiece area for the shrine, and a large photo board which photos can be clipped to by pegs. We will print out photos of friends/family who give us permission to use their photos, which will be used as our victim photos.
Wednesday 7 February 2018
Target Audience
February 7th 2018
In order to find our perfect target audience for our film, we have produced a survey for some short film market research and had a bunch of people from different age groups complete it, answering a few questions about their preferences in film genre, their preferences in comedy, if they usually watch mockumentaries such as 'The Office' or 'Modern Family', and other questions relevant to our research. The survey has been linked below:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6XYNYZY
Expectations of our Audience
Our audience will more than likely expect to laugh whilst watching our film, due to the sarcastic and completely unrealistic plot to the film - being that two serial killers are on a dating show. Although our film is slightly controversial to some groups of people, this isn't a major concern for us as mockumentaries which are controversial typically make the audience laugh anyway due to the aspect of dark humour. Four Lions is an example of a controversial mockumentary which was about terrorists, however it made people laugh as it was pretty humorous. The fact that our film surrounds a serious scenario can help to keep the audience entertained and intrigued in the film, as they would be in a real documentary/dark film. This will also prevent them from disengaging in the film and becoming confused.
Our Target Audience
Our target audience is very broad as it combines comedy, dark humour and the theme of documentaries all in one, and each of these genres attract various types of people, which makes it very difficult for us to narrow our target audience down to a strict group of people.
Specifically, our film will mainly attract groups of people who are interested in dark humour, as this is a light hearted, comedy about serial killers. This is a pretty wide group of people as interest in murder, crimes and conspiracy theories have all become very popular in the past years because of an increase in bloggers and vloggers talking about unsolved mysteries and theories about popular cases. Buzzfeed Unsolved is an example of a popular series on Youtube which attracts this sort of audience. As well as this, a local audience will be attracted because our film is set in Belfast - this is an easy way of attracting an audience because crowds of people are typically interested in viewing films/series that are created/produced in their area, which has been seen to work before in Northern Ireland with shows such as Game Of Thrones and Derry Girls.
Our film is targeted at both male and females which we believe is fitting because of the different themes which occur in our film. As a result of research, we found out that dark humour was typically more popular among a male audience which is also prevalent in our film, therefore making the film attractive to a male audience. However, we also have the theme of love going on within the film too, which is typically more popular among a female audience. It also helps that our film features both a male and female character, so the film isn't overly dominated by a particular sex, so this will help to keep the film open and attractive to both genders.
The age of our target audience will roughly range from 16-25 ideally, as this is typically the age group that mockumentaries are aimed at; such as Borat and Bruno. Other aspects which may attract a particular audience are class and ethnicity, which doesn't really apply to our film as we haven't included class, race or ethnicity as having an impact on the story line and plot of the film. Because of this, we have decided to leave this out of our target audience, as we aren't really attracting particular ethnicity groups or social class groups.
How We Know We Chose the Right Audience
We know that we have definitely chosen the correct audience for our film because at first we weren't 100% sure if the target audience was suitable for our film, so Eimir created a survey to allow us to have a deeper insight into different age groups and their preferences in films, and some other questions which related to our film, which we could use to gain useful information about potential viewers. We made this survey available to our friends and family of different age groups and genders etc. which allowed us to gain information from different groups of people, and not just people from our own age group with interests similar to our own.
We know that we chose the correct audience as we had evidence to back this up due to our survey, which I have analysed below:
AGE:
Nearly 50% of our responses were in the age range that we had originally wanted (16-25), so this allowed us to gather a lot of information about our target audience. However, we also received responses from other age groups, apart from 55 - 74, which gave us a good insight into the interests of other age ranges that could be a potential target audience.
GENDER:
The majority of our responses were from females, leaving us with roughly 30% of the responses being from a male audience. This left the survey slightly bias towards a females opinion, however, we successfully received responses from both genders allowing us to consider answers from the point of view of more than one gender.
ETHNICITY:
We had a variety of responses from our audience, but the majority of our audience were white, leaving roughly 13% of the audience responses as Hispanic, Asian, or other. This question didn't leave much on the choice of the audience we were trying to target, but gave us an insight into the number of people included in a local audience who may view our film.
GENRES:
The audience were able to select more than one option in this section, so we typically got a lot of response for multiple answers. The most popular responses were comedy, action, crime, documentary and drama. These genres actually fit our film's theme very well, as our film is aimed at being a mockumentary with dark humour about a crime. This allows it to fit into the comedy category, as well as fitting into the crime genre and also the drama genre, as two murders occur in the film making it dramatic. This feedback let us know that we had definitely chosen the correct target audience as our responses mainly fitted the genres that are present in our film which means that our audience would typically be drawn to and interested in this sort of film.
FILM ELEMENTS:
The responses for this question were quite varied, but the highest voted answer was 'Setting', meaning that our audience typically find that the setting of a film is the most important element in a film. As well as this, 'Sound' was also a popular answer, which received 26.09% of the audience's votes. This answer allowed us to understand that our setting is a really important element for our film, which we are able to produce for our audience as we chose our location very carefully, ensuring that we had a setting that fitted the theme of the film and the personality of our character Bobby. We did this by ensuring we used old fashioned/creepy looking props, like our 'Victim Shrine' that we will set up, and the knife rack stacked with butcher knives as well. Sound was another highly voted answer that we need to keep in mind, so taking from this survey, we will need to definitely put emphasis on the quality of our sound effects such as when Poppy is stabbed, as this is an element that our audience highly value.
MOCKUMENTARIES:
Our audience typically didn't really watch mockumentaries as much as we had hoped, leaving our response for this answer a bit bleak for us. Roughly 63% of our audience watch mockumentaries, varying from more than once a week to once every other month. As over 50% of the audience view mockumentaries relatively regularly, we took this as a positive result that our audience will still be attracted to this genre of film.
COMEDY:
The responses for this question were not very far apart at all, however, slapstick comedy was the more popular option out of the two. This didn't really work out well in our favour, as our film surrounds dark comedy rather than slapstick comedy. However, as the responses are within 4 responses of a difference, we are still going forth with our decision to stick to dark humour as our audience were still fans of dark humour, still making our film interesting and intriguing to the audience.
YOUTUBE VIDEOS:
Our desired response for this question would be that the majority of our audience would be interested in the topic of killers/unsolved murders and would regularly watch videos or documentaries based around these topics. Over 70% of our audience that answered our survey agreed that they enjoy and actively watch videos and documentaries on these topics, which is exactly what we had hoped for. We are going to assume that the 29% who responded 'No', were the responses from the older audience, which would validate our audience being in the younger age range.
DATING SHOWS:
The responses for this question were nearly 50/50, however this was justified as I analysed the results of each individual response and it turned out that the majority of the responses of 'Yes' were in the age ranges of 18-44. The 'No' responses generally were from people in the age range of '45 to 54' and any age range above that, which isn't the age range we are trying to attract so this response was expected. Most of the '18 to 24' range responded yes to this question which is a positive response for us because this is the age range we are particularly trying to attract and intrigue with our film.
As well as analysing exactly who our audience are, we need to establish a certificate for the film to ensure that we understand what we can and can't include in the film, and for what age group it is best tailored to/suitable for.
Our film, 'Last Dates', would be categorised as a 12 because although it is a comedy, it features some graphic violence including blood and poisoning which would be unsettling to younger viewers, but because of the comical context of the violence, it would not be classified as a 15.
Below is a list of the guidelines of a 12 certificate film, decided by the BBFC:
In order to find our perfect target audience for our film, we have produced a survey for some short film market research and had a bunch of people from different age groups complete it, answering a few questions about their preferences in film genre, their preferences in comedy, if they usually watch mockumentaries such as 'The Office' or 'Modern Family', and other questions relevant to our research. The survey has been linked below:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6XYNYZY
Expectations of our Audience
Our audience will more than likely expect to laugh whilst watching our film, due to the sarcastic and completely unrealistic plot to the film - being that two serial killers are on a dating show. Although our film is slightly controversial to some groups of people, this isn't a major concern for us as mockumentaries which are controversial typically make the audience laugh anyway due to the aspect of dark humour. Four Lions is an example of a controversial mockumentary which was about terrorists, however it made people laugh as it was pretty humorous. The fact that our film surrounds a serious scenario can help to keep the audience entertained and intrigued in the film, as they would be in a real documentary/dark film. This will also prevent them from disengaging in the film and becoming confused.
Our Target Audience
Our target audience is very broad as it combines comedy, dark humour and the theme of documentaries all in one, and each of these genres attract various types of people, which makes it very difficult for us to narrow our target audience down to a strict group of people.
Specifically, our film will mainly attract groups of people who are interested in dark humour, as this is a light hearted, comedy about serial killers. This is a pretty wide group of people as interest in murder, crimes and conspiracy theories have all become very popular in the past years because of an increase in bloggers and vloggers talking about unsolved mysteries and theories about popular cases. Buzzfeed Unsolved is an example of a popular series on Youtube which attracts this sort of audience. As well as this, a local audience will be attracted because our film is set in Belfast - this is an easy way of attracting an audience because crowds of people are typically interested in viewing films/series that are created/produced in their area, which has been seen to work before in Northern Ireland with shows such as Game Of Thrones and Derry Girls.
Our film is targeted at both male and females which we believe is fitting because of the different themes which occur in our film. As a result of research, we found out that dark humour was typically more popular among a male audience which is also prevalent in our film, therefore making the film attractive to a male audience. However, we also have the theme of love going on within the film too, which is typically more popular among a female audience. It also helps that our film features both a male and female character, so the film isn't overly dominated by a particular sex, so this will help to keep the film open and attractive to both genders.
The age of our target audience will roughly range from 16-25 ideally, as this is typically the age group that mockumentaries are aimed at; such as Borat and Bruno. Other aspects which may attract a particular audience are class and ethnicity, which doesn't really apply to our film as we haven't included class, race or ethnicity as having an impact on the story line and plot of the film. Because of this, we have decided to leave this out of our target audience, as we aren't really attracting particular ethnicity groups or social class groups.
How We Know We Chose the Right Audience
We know that we have definitely chosen the correct audience for our film because at first we weren't 100% sure if the target audience was suitable for our film, so Eimir created a survey to allow us to have a deeper insight into different age groups and their preferences in films, and some other questions which related to our film, which we could use to gain useful information about potential viewers. We made this survey available to our friends and family of different age groups and genders etc. which allowed us to gain information from different groups of people, and not just people from our own age group with interests similar to our own.
We know that we chose the correct audience as we had evidence to back this up due to our survey, which I have analysed below:
AGE:
Nearly 50% of our responses were in the age range that we had originally wanted (16-25), so this allowed us to gather a lot of information about our target audience. However, we also received responses from other age groups, apart from 55 - 74, which gave us a good insight into the interests of other age ranges that could be a potential target audience.
GENDER:
The majority of our responses were from females, leaving us with roughly 30% of the responses being from a male audience. This left the survey slightly bias towards a females opinion, however, we successfully received responses from both genders allowing us to consider answers from the point of view of more than one gender.
ETHNICITY:
We had a variety of responses from our audience, but the majority of our audience were white, leaving roughly 13% of the audience responses as Hispanic, Asian, or other. This question didn't leave much on the choice of the audience we were trying to target, but gave us an insight into the number of people included in a local audience who may view our film.
GENRES:
The audience were able to select more than one option in this section, so we typically got a lot of response for multiple answers. The most popular responses were comedy, action, crime, documentary and drama. These genres actually fit our film's theme very well, as our film is aimed at being a mockumentary with dark humour about a crime. This allows it to fit into the comedy category, as well as fitting into the crime genre and also the drama genre, as two murders occur in the film making it dramatic. This feedback let us know that we had definitely chosen the correct target audience as our responses mainly fitted the genres that are present in our film which means that our audience would typically be drawn to and interested in this sort of film.
FILM ELEMENTS:
The responses for this question were quite varied, but the highest voted answer was 'Setting', meaning that our audience typically find that the setting of a film is the most important element in a film. As well as this, 'Sound' was also a popular answer, which received 26.09% of the audience's votes. This answer allowed us to understand that our setting is a really important element for our film, which we are able to produce for our audience as we chose our location very carefully, ensuring that we had a setting that fitted the theme of the film and the personality of our character Bobby. We did this by ensuring we used old fashioned/creepy looking props, like our 'Victim Shrine' that we will set up, and the knife rack stacked with butcher knives as well. Sound was another highly voted answer that we need to keep in mind, so taking from this survey, we will need to definitely put emphasis on the quality of our sound effects such as when Poppy is stabbed, as this is an element that our audience highly value.
MOCKUMENTARIES:
Our audience typically didn't really watch mockumentaries as much as we had hoped, leaving our response for this answer a bit bleak for us. Roughly 63% of our audience watch mockumentaries, varying from more than once a week to once every other month. As over 50% of the audience view mockumentaries relatively regularly, we took this as a positive result that our audience will still be attracted to this genre of film.
COMEDY:
The responses for this question were not very far apart at all, however, slapstick comedy was the more popular option out of the two. This didn't really work out well in our favour, as our film surrounds dark comedy rather than slapstick comedy. However, as the responses are within 4 responses of a difference, we are still going forth with our decision to stick to dark humour as our audience were still fans of dark humour, still making our film interesting and intriguing to the audience.
YOUTUBE VIDEOS:
Our desired response for this question would be that the majority of our audience would be interested in the topic of killers/unsolved murders and would regularly watch videos or documentaries based around these topics. Over 70% of our audience that answered our survey agreed that they enjoy and actively watch videos and documentaries on these topics, which is exactly what we had hoped for. We are going to assume that the 29% who responded 'No', were the responses from the older audience, which would validate our audience being in the younger age range.
DATING SHOWS:
The responses for this question were nearly 50/50, however this was justified as I analysed the results of each individual response and it turned out that the majority of the responses of 'Yes' were in the age ranges of 18-44. The 'No' responses generally were from people in the age range of '45 to 54' and any age range above that, which isn't the age range we are trying to attract so this response was expected. Most of the '18 to 24' range responded yes to this question which is a positive response for us because this is the age range we are particularly trying to attract and intrigue with our film.
As well as analysing exactly who our audience are, we need to establish a certificate for the film to ensure that we understand what we can and can't include in the film, and for what age group it is best tailored to/suitable for.
Our film, 'Last Dates', would be categorised as a 12 because although it is a comedy, it features some graphic violence including blood and poisoning which would be unsettling to younger viewers, but because of the comical context of the violence, it would not be classified as a 15.
Below is a list of the guidelines of a 12 certificate film, decided by the BBFC:
- Discrimination
Discriminatory language or behaviour must not be endorsed by the work as a whole. Aggressive discriminatory language or behaviour is unlikely to be acceptable unless clearly condemned.
- Drugs
Misuse of drugs must be infrequent and should not be glamorised or give instructional detail.
- Imitable behaviour
No promotion of potentially dangerous behaviour which children are likely to copy. No glamorisation of realistic or easily accessible weapons such as knives. No endorsement of anti-social behaviour.
- Language
There may be moderate language. Strong language may be permitted, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency within the work as a whole and any special contextual justification.
- Nudity
There may be nudity, but in a sexual context it must be brief and discreet.
- Sex
Sexual activity may be briefly and discreetly portrayed. Moderate sex references are permitted, but frequent crude references are unlikely to be acceptable.
- Threat
There may be moderate physical and psychological threat and horror sequences. Although some scenes may be disturbing, the overall tone should not be. Horror sequences should not be frequent or sustained.
- Violence
There may be moderate violence but it should not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood, but occasional gory moments may be permitted if justified by the context. Sexual violence may only be implied or briefly and discreetly indicated, and its depiction must be justified by context.
Casting
February 7th 2018
While casting our actors/actresses to play the characters in our film, we originally wanted actors/actresses who were a bit more experienced with acting, such as people who go to drama groups like 'Rainbow', or even freelancing actors/actresses who want free gigs for experience.
We had emailed 'Rainbow', a drama group based in Belfast, explaining basically what our film was about and that we were interested in finding some actors/actresses to play the characters in our film if they were interested in gaining a bit of extra acting experience while also helping us out, but we got no response.
We also went searching on websites where extras for films are recruited, as we figured we might be able to find some freelancing actors/actresses who would do free acting jobs for experience, but we couldn't find any who weren't charging, and we don't have a budget for the film so we couldn't hire anyone.
These implications lead us to search for actors/actresses within our friend groups and school community, so we went to the drama A-Level students, and so we asked Beth Hamill (who is a drama student in our school, and also Maeve's cousin) to play Poppy's character, and Cormac Dwyer (a drama student in our school) to play Bobby's character.
We also went searching on websites where extras for films are recruited, as we figured we might be able to find some freelancing actors/actresses who would do free acting jobs for experience, but we couldn't find any who weren't charging, and we don't have a budget for the film so we couldn't hire anyone.
These implications lead us to search for actors/actresses within our friend groups and school community, so we went to the drama A-Level students, and so we asked Beth Hamill (who is a drama student in our school, and also Maeve's cousin) to play Poppy's character, and Cormac Dwyer (a drama student in our school) to play Bobby's character.
Tuesday 6 February 2018
Risk Assessment
February 6th 2018
Below is a list of possible hazards surrounding filming in the locations that we have chosen, and also the hazards around particular scenes we are going to film, and the action we will take to prevent these hazards from happening during filming:
Below is a list of possible hazards surrounding filming in the locations that we have chosen, and also the hazards around particular scenes we are going to film, and the action we will take to prevent these hazards from happening during filming:
|
Hazard
|
Risk
|
Action to be Taken
|
|
Candles
|
The crew members/actors/actresses may be harmed if the candles fall over etc. They are a fire hazard.
|
Make sure that the candles are only lit during the necessary time period in the film. Also ensure that they are surrounded by a container to make them safer and ensure that they have a lesser risk of the candle toppling over and starting a fire. We will also have a first aid kit nearby for the worst case scenario.
|
|
Dragging Poppy’s character on the ground
|
The actress playing Poppy’s character could get harmed during this scene.
|
The actress will be dragged gently along the floor to make sure she isn’t being hurt/harmed. Also make sure to have her head in a position meaning her face won't be hitting against the ground. We will also have a first aid kit nearby for the worst case scenario.
|
|
Poppy’s character falling to the ground after stabbing
|
The actress playing Poppy’s character could get harmed while she falls to the ground.
|
We will film the scene of her falling from a low angle pointing towards Bobby, so we will be able to see her falling but we won’t see the ground in the shot, so we are able to place a mat beneath the actress so she isn’t harmed in the process. We will also have a first aid kit nearby for the worst case scenario.
|
|
Cooking the meal for the end
|
The crew cooking the meal could get burned during the process, or the actor pretending to cook the meal could also get burned in the process. Another risk is that the actor could get food poisoning when eating the meal.
|
We will ensure to wear heat proof oven gloves when necessary, and be careful when touching hot items to reduce the risk of burning ourselves. We will also make sure that we prepare food with clean hands and cook everything throughly so food poisoning won’t be an issue.
|
|
Walking through the park and normal people causing a scene during filming, making it hard for us to film
|
The camera might pick up sounds of strangers talking, or the film could seem a bit staged because passersby might look into the camera etc.
|
We will film in a more remote location in the park to reduce the risk of passersby being present and causing filming issues.
|
|
Windows in the doors possibly reflecting the camera crew in the shots
|
The camera could pick up the reflections of the crew filming the shot, making the film look staged.
|
We will experiment with different filming angles in the dining room to find the angles that best capture the scene without letting the cast be reflected in the windows.
|
|
The blood staining the floor while Poppy is being dragged along the floor
|
The floor could get stained from the blood and the stain may not lift.
|
We will make our own fake blood from a recipe on the internet, popularly used by drama groups which isn’t meant to stain clothes or floors. We will also try to use cling film along the floor during this scene.
|
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Sharpening knives
|
The actor playing Bobby could get cut/harmed whilst sharpening the knives.
|
We will use the knives carefully and take the shot slowly to ensure he doesn’t cut himself by rushing the scene. We will also have a first aid kit nearby for the worst case scenario.
|
Sunday 4 February 2018
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