Targetting Our Audience

As we already had our influential films in place from our last project we started to research into how these film target an audience. The chosen films were: Walk The Line (2005), Crazy Heart (2009) and  I'm Not There (2007).

Crazy Heart and I'm Not There are two films with a rated 15 certificate, because they contain scenes with more explicit objects or actions such as drugs, alcohol and nudity. Walk The Line is more discreet about showing these sensitive subjects, by showing them less frequent. In our film, the idea was to create an emotional and serious view on the affects of drugs and alcohol. To create a more indepth view of these substances we were liable to use graphic scenes that may contain violence and drug taking. This came into terms when we chose our target audience because we certainly did not want to explore this subject to younger spectators.

 Furthermore we felt as though this film would be targetted for a more mature audience, as children may not understand the message put across from the films and what the film shows. Similarly to the film Crazy Heart, our intentions were to show a dysfunctional life of the protagonist character (John Walters). We thought that someone may relate to this lifestyle by struggling with obstacles in the way of happiness. 

Production: Location

During the February half term we were lucky enough to go on a school trip to New York City. While there we were adamant that we would get a shot of the Statute of liberty, the symbol of freedom, for our trailer to symbolise a gleam of redemption in John Walters life. Originally we were meant to get on a ferry and travel all the way to Ellis island, where the statue is, that way we could have had very dynamic shots of our actor up close and personal with the statue. but we missed our ferry by a matter of minutes. So instead we went on the Staten Island ferry which took us all the way around Ellis island. This actually worked to our advantage because instead of just fitting a small section of the statue into the frame I was able to get the statue from head to toe making it instantly recognisable to the audience. In hindsight I much prefer the shot we have now because it allows the beauty and scale of the statue to be viewed all at once which leaves a greater impact on the audience as they acknowledge the symbolic message of hope.

Production: Glass Table Shot

One of the shots filmed for our trailer was a panning shot of the character John Walters drinking a glass of whiskey through a glass table. We achieved this shot by using a pane of glass, that i had previously purchased for a past production, as the glass table. We elevated the glass to an appropriate height to allow me, the cameraman, to slide comfortable underneath with enough room for movement and for my HD camera. Two Chairs and a stack of books were used to set up the pane of glass this allowed the 'glass table' to be very easy to set up and clear away afterwards.

There was a carfeul amount of consideration that went into what props should be placed on the table and how they would be laid out. the props used were medicine bottle, fake tablets, a whiskey glass, apple juice, cigarettes, ashtray, US dollar and flour (cocaine). We chose these items because we intended to make the characters addiction and weakness known to the audience. This makes them feel sympathy towards John Walters as they see he is a damaged individual who is poisoning his life and harming his chances of ever redeeming himself.

the original idea was to have the props spread right across the table by due to the limited amount of space below the glass the only motion i was capable of was an up and down motion meaning we could achieve a pan shot if all the props were placed closer together.

I used the focus on my camera to slightly blur the props in the foreground this strengthend the image of John Walters drinking his whiskey in the background. We made this creative decision because by blurring the foreground we didn't allow the audience to dwell on all the sinful things John walters is doing in his life. Instead by strengthening the image of him in the background it reminded the audience that he is only human and that he makes mistakes.

The location for the shot was in my kitchen. We chose this location because there are fluorescent lights situated in the ceiling which lit the scene perfectly allowing all the prop details to be illuminated. it also gave us a lot of room to set up the glasss table without completely rearranging the room.