Before we began on the practical production it was advised that we did a survey to see if people would like our idea. As a group we had come up with a clear idea we all liked, but there was no point in just us liking it. We therefore devised a questionnaire that contained our idea mixed in with several other ideas we had come up with. We then surveyed 30 people, most from the 16-24 age range as this was our target audience. We then analysed these results and found that the majority of people surveyed would like the basis of our thriller.
The two characters the 30 people wanted to see the most were a ‘Hero’ and a ‘Mysterious character’. Initially we had actually planned to have both of these characters in our opening sequence. But we then questioned whether Michelle would be classed a mysterious character or as hero. We eventually came to the conclusion that she would be the hero and that Natalie would be the mysterious character.
When we came up with our initial idea we knew we wanted it to be a psychological thriller as we wished to incorporate elements that would get inside the viewers head. It would also be deemed a psychological thriller as the main character also experiences things that ‘mess with her head’. When we surveyed our potential audience the largest percent of them preferred a psychological thriller. So we felt that we should stick to that type of thriller.
This was a very important, it told us what our audience think is the most important aspect of a thriller was. This question helped us develop our storyline further as at the beginning we were unsure what people would be most interested in. The two most important aspects chosen were the acting and characters. This sent us on a search for someone who could portray and outsider well and we eventually found our Michelle. We understood that we had a tight filming schedule and would probably need to film during school hours too; this resulted in me being cast for the role of the girl in the mental institute. We eventually found a person who could portray Michelle’s annoying friend well and thus the cast (for at least the first 3 minutes of the movie) was made. As for the special effects and graphics I was already confident on iMovie having used it for GCSE media studies. I did the majority of the editing, but the rest of the group was always there assisting. We all discussed the editing as it was happening so it was not just a one person job. There are no amazing CGI effects in our movie because we were using iMovie, but I still feel that the we did the movie justice with the effects and used them effectively to aid the storyline. As we knew these were the 3 most important aspects we focused on these 3 more than the music and the credits.
We knew as a group that the most important element of any opening sequence is to make the viewer want to watch the rest of the movie and in this case we would have to build up a sense of suspense or enigma. We discussed ways in which to do this effectively and came to the conclusion that it should be done in two parts. The first being the suspense built up by the dream Michelle has. This could be slightly confusing to the audience but it would definitely create a tense atmosphere and build up suspense. The other way is to leave the opening sequence on a cliff hanger. That way the viewer would want to see the rest of the movie as they are unsure what is going to happen next. I think the most effective way we built up suspense was through the cliff hanger ending.
We originally did not intended to have much action in our opening sequence as it would be a bit off putting, especially in a psychological thriller. So it was never planned to have loads of action in the opening sequence, the results from this question confirmed that there was no need to put in loads of action to please our potential audience.All of these results helped us develop our idea into the opening sequence a lot. We weren’t 100% sure whether the audience would like our idea and how we would portray it to please them. So obviously research and analysis played a big part in us getting the idea from our head to the Mac in a way that would please both the audience and allow us to keep the originality of our idea.
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