Questionnaire Distribution

Questionnaire Distribution

Getting our survey out to the public

In order to get a wide variety of answers, we decided to upload our questionnaire onto the website Survey Monkey which is known for publishing surveys. This allows for a widespread reach due to it being online and many more people are most likely going to see it. This is a form of marketing for us too as people can see that we are due to produce a film so this builds up interest as well as become an anticipated film. Not only that, but Survey Monkey also provides you with a unique URL which you can share with others to provide them with a direct link to the survey. This makes it a lot easier to to distribute our survey within a large variety of audiences. For example, we were able to send the link out to friends on social media. We needed our survey results as quickly as possible so that we could start producing our film. So, we had to do everything we could possibly do to ensure that we receive a reasonable amount of responses in order to find any trends.

Alongside an online survey, we also produced a hard copy of the questionnaire to be able to hand it out to our college peers and teachers. This enabled us to ensure that we receive a variation in the answers due to the age difference between students and teachers as well as their difference in preferences.

Questionnaire Draft

Questionnaire Draft

In order to construct this questionnaire, we put our ideas forward and of those, we chose the most suitable. It was crucial for us to create this draft survey as the group had 2 varying ideas which needed to be chosen through the process of elimination. This questionnaire would enable us to collect sufficient information about our audience which would in return, allow us to decide what type of film we should produce.

We decided to ask questions such as age, hometown and occupation to get a rough idea of our audience as well as build a profile. Now, as many would consider this useless, we managed to use it to our advantage as we could determine wealth and interests. For example, by asking what city the audience lives in, we could determine their wealth. This is because if they live in an upmarket area such as Central London, they are most likely quite wealthy and earning above the average wage. What this meant to us was, they must be willing to pay to be able to watch our film in cinemas as they can afford to. Furthermore, we also asked the question as to what film genres the public prefers in order to collect enough data to find a trend. This would help us to target our audience directly as we would know what their preferences are for a film.

Audience Member Profile

This is Jordan Randy. He is a 16 year old teenager currently living in the UK with his parents. To be specific, he lives in South West London and attends South Thames College.

He enjoys playing Playstation 4 as well as Xbox One and prefers first person shooter games and football games like Fifa over other games like minecraft or drive club.

According to the traditional Socio-economic table, Jordan is classified as E due to the fact that he is in full time education and isn't earning anything as of yet. However, his parents belong in "Middle Class" at a social grade of C2 due to them having skilled manual jobs.

His father is an assistant restaurant manager at their local Nandos whereas his mother is a data analyst.

Jordans normal routine consists of going to college, going out with friends for an hour or so, returning home for around 4:30 PM, playing games like Black Ops 2 for around an hour, followed by a family dinner. After this, he does his homework and revises for around 2 hours. Lastly, he relaxes himself before going to bed by watching television or a movie. His favourite movie genre is Action / Comedy similar to what our production will be.

Ideas for the opening sequence to my film

We thought of 2 ideas collectively to ensure that we produce an opening sequence which we all are involved in. We didn't want anyone left out as well as ensuring that we have a back up plan just in case one idea doesn't work out as expected.

Our ideas were as follows:

Idea 1

Two people in the group seemed to enjoy anime and manga quite a lot so we accommodated that thought and decided that we would create an opening scene inspired my an anime. In order to achieve this, we would have to showcase the life and history of a character followed by a fight.

Due to the fact that we were quite enthusiastic to create a film like this, it made it easier to layout and create the opening sequence. This type of opening would be different to modern day openings as we will show the life as well as the culture of Japan which many people today do not know very much about. This is a niche in todays audience as they may watch anime and read manga however, they are not very well exposed to the history of Japan itself.


Idea 2

With our second idea, we decided to change it up a bit and thought of a superhero film in comparison to a samurai film due to larger audiences being able to relate more to a superhero film. Our superhero would have special powers such as being able to read other people's minds. Recent trends show that superhero films seem to do better with large audiences rather than samurai films. For example, The Last Samurai made a total of $456,758,981 on the box office whereas Man of Steel made an astonishing $668 million. This evidence shows that we would have a larger audience if we were to produce a superhero film. We had to strategise as to how we would go about this, so we decided that if we created a superhero film, we would make significantly more profit and we would stand a chance of becoming a global blockbuster.

Editing Techniques

Editing Techniques

Continuity Editing: The arranging of sequence shots to show progress in events. If they are the same shots, an editor can put forward many different scenarios.

Accelerating time: Alongside expanding time, this editing technique portrays fast paced scenes that will advance the narrative with an entertained audience efficiently.

Expanding Time: When you expand time in a video, you are making the duration of the video sequence longer than in real-time.

Insert Shot: An insert shot is a close-up of something that exists within the basic scene. The latter is typically visible within the establishing or wide shot.

Cutaway: Unlike insert shots that show significant aspects of the overall scene in close up, cutaways cut away from the main scene or action to add related material.

Relational Editing: This form of editing places shots that have no symbolic meaning next to each other possibly for juxtaposition. However, the main use of this is to make a cause-effect scene to advance a narrative.

Thematic Editing: In thematic editing, also referred to as montage editing, images are edited together based only on a central theme. In contrast to most types of editing, thematic editing is not designed to
tell a story by developing an idea in a logical sequence.

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task

1) At a micro, technical level, how well did you observe the conventions of continuity and the language of editing?

By using a variety of shots and angles, I was able to create the perfect atmosphere in order to intrigue the audience. I believe that on a micro-technical level, we got on quite well. For example, we managed to successfully demonstrate matching on action at the very beginning when the principal (Jordan) is entering the room, there is a close up of the handle followed by a mid-shot of his legs approaching the camera. This was to build up tension and enigma so that the audience wouldn't know what to expect.


2) What were you pleased with? What seems to work well and why?

I was pleased with the camera work as it was shot without a tripod and still turned out quite good. At first, we used an establishing shot in order to set the scene for the audience and to get them engaged into the scene. We also did a close up of a door opening as it allowed us to achieve the effect we aimed for on the audience.

3) What mistakes did you make? What would you have done differently?

Our preliminary task on the whole came out quite well however, we had a small error which we didn't notice until after we had edited it all together. When the principal (Jordan) was yelling at the student (Jamil) we used a point of view shot to show the principal. This should have been followed by another point of view shot showing the student however, we made the mistake of showing a panning shot of the student infuriated and leaving the room.


4) How did you manage the group dynamics, equipment and resources?

We managed the group dynamics by choosing who would play what role through the process of voting. Not only that, but we also assessed each others skills. For example, I was quite good with the camera and knew what I was doing hence the group choosing me to video the piece. We created a brainstorm of multiple ideas for our short film and chose one through the process of elimination according to what type of film we each preferred to produce.


5) What problems did you encounter logistically?

The problem we encountered logistically was that we didn't have a tripod therefore we had to shoot everything with a steady hand. This made it difficult because we had to be very careful about every shot and also had to be wary of time.