The Perfect Audience Member To Our Film

We deduced that our film would target an audience aged 17 to 65, due to the fact that it is less action-packed and more about the intellect and deductive reasoning powers of a detective.

This audience would be predominantly male, as the (male) characters are more relatable for them than for females.  However, the young assistant could attract a female audience to the film.

To specify the thriller to a tribe would be associating it with the "rahs" and "indies".  These groups are generally more culturally aware and interested, watching more niche or foreign films than other tribes.  The background of these tribes is usually upper-middle to upper-class, people who have more time to be interested in these niche films.

Musically, our thriller appeals to people with a more classic new-era taste.  Soft rock, folk and country songs appeal to the audience.

Based solely on the fact that it is a detective/mystery thriller, the TV dramas that the target audience may be interested would be Sherlock, Breaking Bad, and The Wire.

Their classical taste, with an interest in more niche projects, means that the audience would like films such as the James Bond films, The Godfather films, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Joyeux Noel, Life is Beautiful, and Gangs New York.  Mainly historical and gangster films on the mainstream spectrum, with European independent films such as The Girl Who Played With Fire or Let The Right One In.

Some examples of films the target market might want to see in cinemas now are Lincoln, Broken City, Gangster Squad and Skyfall.  Apart from these, they may visit art house theatres such as The Electric Cinema in London.

A few hobbies/subjects that would pique the interest of these people would be reading, photography, art, museums and theatre.  Their style would be classical and aware, not trendy.

Probably professions of the target market would be professors, teachers, people involved in theatre/film, retirees, journalists, writers, law enforcement, or even students.


Here's a Facebook page of the perfect audience member to our film!

Distribution of Zirgi

In order to make the most out of our thriller, it would be best to have a platform release, if we were to choose to release in cinemas.  The cinemas would be smaller, art-house and independent theatres.

It would be ideal to release it on to DVD or other home entertainment systems that the target audience would have (Netflix, BBC iPlayer instead of Xbox, which they probably would not have) right after the cinema release, to capitalise on the word-of-mouth buzz.   It would probably only be released in the UK, as the target audience is mainly a niche British audience.

A company that would be best to distribute Zirgi is Soda Pictures.  Soda Pictures is a UK film distributor of independent, art house and world cinema.  Founded in 2002 by Edward Fletcher and Eve Gabereau, the mission of the company is a commitment to British film, while also expanding the world cinema influences in Britain.  Many of the films it distributes go on to be exhibited in film festivals around the world.  The films are all low to mid budget productions, with varying genres that stay within the niche audience market.

This company does many straight-to-DVD releases, and markets the films sparingly, relying mainly on the short films by more famous directors to draw attention to the films.  Their website includes links to a blog and features trailers and synopses on it, as well as offering free downloads of segments of the film.  This would be adequate marketing for a film with a more well-known director, but in order to have our thriller better received, our film would need to be advertised in print (newspapers, film magazines) or on Twitter and Facebook.  It would be most useful to advertise in libraries, music halls, universities and in-theatre as these are places that the target audience would be found in.

Soda Pictures have distributed films by many famous directors, such as Francis Ford Coppola, Benicio del Toro and Michael Winterbottom, but also from new, relatively unknown directors (like ourselves).

Our film should be exhibited in 2D not only because that is how it was filmed and edited, but due to the fact that our target audience is older, and used to seeing films in 2D.  Additionally, the art-house and independent cinemas of today most likely do not have the funding for 3D exhibition (glasses, formatting) and most films targeted at a niche audience are 2D.

Some films that are similar to ours that they have distributed are "Forgiveness of Blood", an Albanian film, and "Small Town Murder Songs".  "Forgiveness of Blood" is a foreign film about a 17 year old boy accused of murder and forced under house arrest, similar to ours because it is set in Eastern Europe and involves murder.  "Small Town Murder Songs" is about a detective investigating a murder case while battling with his own past, similar to ours in that it is a detective thriller.

Due to the fact that we are a small, independent film targeting a niche audience, and that we have elements of a foreign film (actors, setting) in our thriller, Soda Pictures will be interested in distributing our film!

Representation of Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality

What does "Zirgi" mean?

Our preliminary title, "Trans-Europe Express" wasn't going to make the cut because it is too general, and also our thriller is not set on a train.

So we chose Zirgi (pronounced JHZER-GEH) is the Latvian word for horse.  We wanted to keep in the theme with horses ("Bring on the dancing horses", from the murder note) and make reference to the Latvian setting.

Wild Latvian horses in Kaujas, Latvia

Conventions of Real Media Products in Our Thriller

Real Media Conventions in Zirgi

Editing our Thriller

Editing can be a tricky process.   We walked into the editing suite with confident smiles on our faces, only to be met with an unloving blank stare from the computer monitors.

After all our clips were uploaded onto the server, we sat down, selected our folder and checked it in.  Now we were ready to begin the true editing process.  Naturally, the first thing we did was to create a Rush bin, and move all the clips into there, and put a Log bin above for the clips we might be using.  Since we were quite an indecisive team, we created a Maybe bin, for clips where the audio was useful or if the visual was more useful.

We put our log, rush and maybe bins in the browser after checking them in the viewer.
We then put them together on the timeline and watched the finished product in the canvas. 

Preceding the creation of the bins and watching/sorting the clips, we began dragging the best clips we had into order, into a sort of rough draft.  This took a couple of sessions.

The way we organised the actual editing was to have one person controlling the computer, while the other two would just contribute to how we should cut it or what order it should go in.  We had external people watch the clip to confirm its verisimilitude and to let us know if we succeed in creating interest.

After we had set up the main chronological order and cut down the clips, we saved it to one computer, taking it off the Final Cut Server, and put it into High Definition.  This gave us a completely new perspective on how we would add in special effects for the flashbacks, as well as how fluid it was so far.


The main thing we worked on during the process, after we had put everything into order and cut it down was the special effects for the flashbacks and the sound.

For the flashbacks, we used the filter "Bad Film" and sped up the clips to create a shaky effect.  This really helped differentiate between the flashbacks and the main clips, as well as adding a creepier atmosphere to it and creating the enigma of the film.  We also added shatter sounds during the flashbacks from Soundtrack Pro to further differentiate them from the rest of the clip.



















The sound was what took up the majority of our time in editing.  We had to cut different sounds to create the effect we wanted, meaning we had to split many of the audio tracks from their video clips to move them around, which proved quite confusing.  We elongated the sounds of one of the car clips to cover the entire car scene because it was the best out of them all, continuing it to the text "Zirgi" as the detective slammed the second door, it created fluidity in editing.  We also auditioned sounds from Soundtrack Pro for the wind ambient sounds, to create a remote, wintry Eastern European setting.  We put these sounds throughout the thriller and put reverb on them to create an atmosphere that one might find inside a shipping container, metallic and cold.

An important contribution that I made to the editing process was cropping the frame of the clip to cover up some mistakes that our actors made when the detective (Simon) was looking at the handprint.  I did this by resizing it and increasing the definition of the newly cropped clip.  This took me about 20 minutes to figure out, but it made a big difference to the visual appeal of our film as well as keeping the verisimilitude of it.

 All in all, I found the editing process to be, although extremely stressful, very rewarding.  The most difficult part was splitting up the work equally and coming to agreements in the group, but these problems were usually easily solved.  Despite the issues we ran into, it was very interesting and fulfilling to see what weeks of planning and hours of shaping and polishing would lead to: our finished product.

Vertigo vs. Warner Bros

Vertigo Films UK



"Act like a criminal to catch a criminal."

Vertigo Films is a British film production company which promotes commercially driven independent films, that is to say, independent films that may become mainstream and have a larger profit margin than most independent films would.  The majority of the films are either action, thriller, or rough comedy.

A recent film made by Vertigo is "The Sweeney", based on the TV show from the 70s of the same name. It is about a detective who enters the Flying Squad of London's Metropolitan Police.  The film was premiered in Switzerland, at the Locarno Film Festival (August 1st) and was subsequently released in the UK on the 12th September.  It was not highly anticipated by the US audience, due to the story as well as the fact that it was mainly promoted in the UK.  It was promoted with Orange, as a pre-film advertisement in cinemas across the UK. 


The film had an original budget of £3,000,000, however, after production, the final budget ended up being less than £2,000,000!  The film made a box office total of £4,474,661, successful considering the lower box-office returns of the UK. It topped the box office in the opening weekend, bringing in 1.5 million and replacing Dredd at the top of the chart.   It was advertised well, mainly appearing as posters in tube stations or in newspapers.  Facebook pages and Twitter were also means of promoting the film.  



This film was set to target the 15-35 male audience that Vertigo has targeted in the past (The Football Factory, Monsters, Retreat) and was a success. It was released in December 2012 on Blu-ray and DVD.  













Warner Bros. 




Warner Bros. is one of the big six, that is to say they are one of the six highest profit film companies in the world.  They are vertically integrated, owning almost everything from production to post-production to distribution to merchandise. 

A successful film recently made by WB Pictures is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  Released July 7th, 2011, to coincide with the school holidays, this film was the ultimate of the Harry Potter series.  The pre-sold elements of it being a sequel, a franchise and already having a fan base from the books, as well as having well-known actors and a high-concept, simplistic storyline made it an obvious success.  

Its budget was $250 million, mostly spent on above the line costs such as set, special effects and props.  Marketing for the film included posters ("It all ends 7.15"), Facebook groups, Twitter, a website, behind-the-scenes interviews with the cast and merchandising.  

$1,328,111,219 was its worldwide earning, making it the fourth-highest grossing film in history and the highest grossing film of 2011.  

Distribution of the film for home-media began in December 2011.  It was released on DVD and Blu-ray, in both single set and box set format.  It became the fastest-selling pre-order on Amazon as well!

Contrasts

While Vertigo makes mainly British, lower budget, experimental films, Warner Bros. makes high-budget, high-concept, franchise films destined for global success.  

This is due to the conglomerate status of WB Pictures, as well as the fact that the American film industry is much more vast and rich than that of Britain.