Evaluation: What Kind of Media Institution Would Distribute Your Film?

Evaluation: How We Attracted Our Target Audience

Evaluation: Who Would Be the Target Audience for Your Film?

To be honest, the region that our movie, Ruthless Russians is based upon would be in Russia. We thought of this because there are a large variety of Russian mafias included within video games and also in other films e.g, eastern promises.

The age for our target audience would be for people who are in their teens & young adults. This is because it contains elements of crime & action (asked in our survey) which they think the can relate to. This also an known as the Ideal I as the audience feels that they can associate with their behaviors with the characters of the movie. This was put forward by Sigmund Freud.

The gender isn't particularly focused onto either side. We had an all male group so we didn't really have a choice but to role with it. I would say this film would fit male audiences, we think this because this film is mostly about chasing and the main antagonist being part of a mafia. i feel like females would not be interested in these sort of genres but fit into more of the romance/comedy section.

As for the race, we made it stereotypical due to the fact that a black male is stealing from the Russian mafia, which are filled with white males. From our past research, we saw that many popular films include Stereotypes within them, so we try to include stereotypes in our film.

Overall, our main target audience are:
European Urban multicultural Teenage males.

Evaluation: Technology Used for Coursework

Evaluation: Interviews of Target Audience

Here I have conducted an interview of 4 different people asking them three different questions. The questions were what did they like about the movie, what did they dislike about the movie and how could the movie be improved.

Evaluation: Character Representation

Podcast: Evaluation - Shane

Podcast: Evaluation - Albert

Podcast: Evaluation - Paul

Podcast: Evaluation - Kris

This is my furthered evaluation of what i have achieved throughout the project as well as the pieces of media created, all the aspects of media and filming applied and even a further insight in to what materials used, both physical and virtual such as softwares.

Evaluation: Reaching Out to Target Audience

Here, I have posted the movie Ruthless Russians and the movie survey onto Facebook. This is because Facebook is mainly used by teenagers & they are the target audience for this film. By posting these two links onto Facebook, it gives easy access for the target audience to watch Ruthless Russians & this shows evidence of us reaching out to our target audience

Construction: Reflections- What We Have Done So Far 3

So...
This is our last day of recording, all we have to do is record the phone scene between Bogdan and Viktor, the boss.
It was quite hard to keep the accent and what they have to say to be connected, but by around 4:00, we managed to finish the recording. we celebrated by drinking cans.
Tomorrow we are planning on finishing up on premiere.

Evaluation: Target Audience Research Summary

There are a few things that I have found out from the survey monkey questionnaire about Ruthless Russians & the interviews that I carried out with teh audience.

One of the things that I found out was that the audience liked the character Emmanuel (played by me). This is due to the fact that they were amused when he finds a random bag with litte knowing that it was filled with £50,000 & says "Damn, that's a whole load of money" running off with it after. They also liked how the movie was directed and had good continuity as it ran smoothly. They also found the point of view shots very interesting.

However, the audience were not pleased by acting as they thought that the russian accents were a bit too fake especially from the character Viktor. They also thought that it was the acting let the film down to a tiny scale. In addition, one of the audiences found that the movie Ruthless Russians too comedic rather than being a crime thriller.

One of the things that the audience suggested that my group could do to make the film better would be by improving our acting skills. This is due to the fact that 58% of the 12 respondents voted on that option and one of the audiences from my audience had suggested so. This would mean practicing our lines more & show our facial expressions more. Another thing that would make the film better would be by improving the concept of the thriller. This would involve adjusting the narrative of the movie. Furthermore, there should have been more camera shots and angles.

One of the changes that I would make to the movie if I were to start this process all over again would be to improve my acting skills so I would actually sound surprised and not mono toned. Another thing that would happen would be to improve the russian accents portrayed by Viktor, Niko and Bogdan.

Evaluation: Target Audience research

Here, I have gathered four different people to watch the movie Ruthless Russians. I recorded their reactions by using photo booth. The whole purpose of this was so that I could gather their reactions to the movie and to see whether they liked it or not.

Evaluation - Suvery Monkey Results

For this survey, I have asaked ten questions on things that we could do in order to enhance our movie. These included things such as important aspects of the movie such as Mise-en-scene (props, costumes, location) and the acting of our characters. I asked teenagers as they were the main target audience.

For the first question, I asked people what kind of genre the movie was. This was so that firstly, people would be able to identify what genre the movie was & secondly to see if the motifs of the movie were evident. Ruthless Russians is actually a crime thriller due to the fact that it shows a failed crime as the russians who have escaped with dirty money in a bag have managed to lose it & it featured chases and suspenseful music. What I have found out from this question would be that 67% of the 10 respondents chose Crime Thriller and 33% of respondents chose Action Thriller. Even though crime thrillers have elements of action thrillers, it is clear that the movie is a crime thriller.

For Question 2, I asked people which part of the movie did they find the most favourable. As this was an open ended question, people were free to personally put their opinions across. The response that I received from this question were "Damn, that's a lot of money", When the Russian realised that the bag had gone missing, Albert in general, Albert saying dayummm, Albert, "Dayum, that's a whole lot a money!", When the money was stolen, Dayyyuumm, When albert found the bag and The russian accents were amusing. From this question, it has come to the conclusion that people were really amused when I came across the bag & came up with the famous catchphrase.  This question was asked so we could find the good aspects of the movie & how people would remember the movie by.


For the third Question, I asked if the trarget audience were able to understand the narrative of the movie. The narrative is basically the storyline of the movie. What I have found out was that 70% of the respondents were able to understand the narrative of the story and 30% were not able to. This means that some people were not able to understand the storyline & as a result, one way to improve the film would be to have a clear storyline.



 
 For Question 4, I asked people if they found the clothing that was worn by each individual character were appropriate for the movie. This is part of Mise-en-scene as each individual has their own clothing style and each costume is distinguishable. For instance, the antagonists would be dressed smartly in this case as they are part of a mafia & the protagonist in this film was wearing casual clothing as he is not involve in any crime. I found out that 90% of the respondents said yes and 10% said no. This means that clothing were not a huge issue in the movie.

For question 5, I have asked people what aspects of the movie that could be improved on for the movie Ruthless Russians. What  I found out would be that 60% of respondents voted for our acting skills, 20% voted for continuity & 10 % of respondents voted for characters & camera shots. This therefore means it clearly shows that acting was a huge isssue and this needs to be looked at as a way to improve our film. The next important factor would be the continuity of the film such as making sure that each scene makes sense.





For Question 6, I asked people if the location of the movie was a good place as this was a part of Mise-en-scene. I found out that 50% of the respondents found the location of the movie suitable and the other 50% found the location good. This means that the location of the film was no issue whatsoever.

For Question 7, I asked people if the sports bag that was filled with money seemed to be an appropriate prop or not. This was asked just in case the prop needed changing. What  I have found out was that 90% of the respondents found the bag to be an appropriate. However, 1 person disagreed. "That person stated, I think it should of been in a briefcase, but then I understand that sports bags are modern now so I still understood it." Overall, the bag was not a major issue and people seemed to like it so if we were to improve the movie, the bag would still be there.

 For the eigth question, I asked people if they would want to continue to watch the movie. This was to see if the movie was a success or not. 100% of all the respondents would like to continue suggesting that the movie was a success.





For Question 9, I asked the target audience if the choice of music for the movie was appropriate. This was so that if we were to enhance the movie, some of the songs would have had to be changed. Fortunately, this was not the result as all of the respondents found the music to be appropriate.

For the last question, I asked how the cliffhanger was at the end of the opening scene. This was the close up of Bogdan saying "yes, we will find him". Clearly, the last question had to be an open ended question so we could get a range of opinions from each individual. The responses that I've received were "Banter", It was really good as I wanted to continue watching to see what happened next, Wanted to watch more, was effective, Albert was gonna get killed, Poor, It was average, it could've left a bit more of a suspense, instead of just ditching suspense with a resolution. It was good, made me want to know what would happen to the character who stole the sports bag full of money. It was suitable but perhaps should have included several short snips of what was going to happen next. "??" & It was pretty well designed, and not too suggestive so I think it was good. This suggests that the cliffhanger was good but it could be worked onto a little bit.






                                                                       

Construction: Reflections - What We Have Done So Far 2

So far:

What we have done recently was the door scene with Bogdan and his subordinate. This was also a success considering the amount of time i spent explaining the scene to the rest of the group. i am really thankful that i did, we managed to get past this recording session swiftly, There was a little mistakes while opening the door, like it was locked, Half open or we could hear one of our teammates pets in the background.
we then returned to class and added those scenes to the ones we already had up. And synced them up professionally.

Construction: Reflections - Highs and Lows of Production

The Highs of the production:

1. Everyone is working together, we have just got a calendar set on the dates we plan to record. these days consists at the end of Fridays to our Thursday breaks every week. The team is really nice to each other, from giving sometime acting advice to the different camera shots we try out. Although we make many mistakes, each of us stick together like a good group should.
Many of us had a specialty in different things, such as the editor, the actor, the director and our sound picker. Putting these accolades together makes a great project in the end that includes many laughs.

2. While we were editing, we all had our inputs into what sounds we need to add into what scenes which we had all agreed upon. Next was our cooperation inside the room. When it was time to do our podcasts, we all gave each other scripts about the topic the podcast was about, Although we had to retake many of them, nobody argued and continued with their work. Then comes the evaluation, when we all realised we had to do our evaluation podcasts as a solo, we were all worried that we might mess up straight away, but because we wrote the questions down, we were confident enough to know what we had to talk about in about 3 takes each.

The Lows of the production:

1. Although everyone did their work, some of us miss days off because of sickness. normally due to this, they are not able to complete the work that they are assigned bringing are team further back. at one point, one of our group members did not appear for a whole 3 lessons. However, we did manage to get some more work done leaving that members work behind. They basically had to catch up to the rest of us with the work they have missed out.
It doesn't even have to be a sickness. Most of us think that because there is no more class, we can relax during the weekend, which leads to more work not being done.

Construction: Reflections - What Has Happened So Far

So far:

We have just filmed the outside scenes of the two characters running, of Bogdan placing the bag and taking a leak behind the wall and Emmanuel coming across the bag. Todays session went very quickly as we knew what we were doing and had the perfect camera shots to do so. Right now we have finished putting together those scenes into premiere and are ready to record the rest.

Construction: Bloopers

During the process of making this movie, there were a lot of mistakes that have occured. These included the actors getting their lines wrong, people laughing during the scenes and many other things. Firstly, the mistakes that happened occured very often during film every time we would move to a new scene, the actors would mess up. The common mistake would be that the actors would laugh during their lines and if it was not that, then it would have been them saying the wrong lines which tended to be annoying. How we managed to work past the bloopers/mistakes would be by re filming the exact same scene but giving them clear directions & making sure that no one interrupts the actor when they're speaking. Furthermore, there was 3 seconds of silence before the actors could speak in order to edit out any interruptions.

Construction: Reflections - Film

We have just finished producing our Film.

What we have done well-  i believe that our camera shots were our strongest feat in this film, they were ranging from the POV shots to the Extreme long shots. Some of these camera shots were moving from left to right as seen in the long shot and of Emmanuel running along the pavement.
The camera shot that we have used the most was the low angle shot and medium shot, i don't really know why we had these low angle shots because nobody was showing power, The medium shots were used in the phone scene, this was because this scene was mostly focused on dialog and dialog only.
Another feat that i think we have done well in was the continuity. We have recorded all of our clips in one day so that the weather and clothing would be the same in all our clips. We also made sure that there weren't going to be any cuts between our clips when joining them up together.

What we need to improve on- I believe that our acting needs a lot of improvement, This is mostly because we cannot be heard most of the time. Although it was our first time doing this, so it is understandable for it to need improving.

Construction: Reflection - The Results

The results that came back were mostly positive. we got some constructive criticism which we would improve on in the future, we got most of our audiences to laugh at a scene in which one of our actors took part in, the reason why it was funny was because of the way he took the bag.
Some people do not like the fact that we have included the Russian accents because of our interpretations being no where near the standard of a normal Russian accent.
We got some uniqueness out of our film though, being the only group who would even include an accent.
This was a fun project to do, thanks to the team.

Construction - Reflection: Finish/Target Audience

We have now finished with our premiere editing, what we will now have to is show the finished outcome to the audience and get some feedback.
We have already made a survey on survey monkey and are awaiting results to come in, we have also asked people to come in on a certain day to watch our film. On the same day, we will record their feedback in order to help improve our future film development.
Hopefully that goes well.

Construction: Editing

Construction: Adding Title Graphics

Adding title graphics from albertmarealle

Construction: Reflection - After Survey

The survey we were planning on doing (on a website called SurveyMonkey) has now gone up, we are now waiting for one of our members to upload the survey onto a social network to get people to take part. Once we get the results, we will act upon the feedback in the future.
In the meantime, we are working on all our current blogposts.

Construction: Non Diegetic Music

Introduction to the setting

Chase scene




Chase scene 2




Our music is here to create the atmosphere of the opening that we shall be filming and these we have made in accordance to the sound that will be overplayed during the long shots as well as the chase.
The first part is calm and therefore will be musically setting the environment for what is about to come therefore setting the scenes using 2 senses and allowing it to be more obvious as well as relatable to the character.

Construction : Strengths and Weaknesses 3

Construction: Strengths and Weaknesses 2

Construction - Strengths and Weaknesses 1

Construction: Adding Non Diegetic Music

Construction: Reflections - Editing

After we have recorded all the required parts to our film, we have moved onto the editing.

What we have done well- What i think we have done well on was the time needed to edit our film, i believe it took us a full hour to put everything together and sync it all up together on premiere. We have added video transition effects that took care of random cuts between each clip. This effect is called dip to black, this got our movie to look slightly more dramatical.
Another feat that i think we have done well on was the audio. As a group, we all found the right music/sound on youtube and transferred those files onto premiere, we then synced those audio files with the right scenes to create another dramatical effect to our Film.

What i think needs improving with our editing is the sound volume. At the end of the film, the volume was too loud at the phone scene, we couldn't clearly hear what the two men were talking about because of it.

Construction: Reflections - Pre-filming

Reflections

We have already filmed the first parts of the film outside where our actor paul drops the bag and thats mostly it, however we still have ambitions for chase scenes and albert (emannuel) running away with the bag which is what we are planning next as it takes time to run through multiple alleyways and multiples shots cutting into each-other to give it a dynamic feel.

Our plan is further along the line take the film to the inside and therefore have a change of environment as well as give us a chance to use lighting such as low key lighting to therefore allow us to change the feeling the audience will be enduring and their emotions, attachments and the links they have made within our movie as a result of just the starting scene overall leaving a cliff hanger later on somehow.

The types of camera shots we will be using will be POV shots therefore not only for obvious reasons that the viewer will have relations within the movie and a feel of being in it but also the fact that the fear and excitement that emmanuel will want to of experience will need to be constructed within the audience and their minds.