Who would be the audience for our thriller (TASK 4)

Seeing as our thriller sequence is a film noir our target audience would be quite diverse. For example film noir has been around since the 1940s therefore many a people would be attracted to watch it from the older generation through to younger people that are interested in older films. An example of a old noir style film in Brighton Rock which was remade in 2010 by Roland Joffe and will therefore target a younger audience who may rediscover older film noirs through this. Our film is a homage to 40s film noir a film such as The Big Sleep, the Maltese Falcon and Sunset Boulevard. These films are classics so therefore they will target a wide audience of film fans around the world.

Film noir underwent resurgence in the 1990s with neo noir films coming out such as LA Confidential, The Last Seduction and The Usual Suspects. These films at the time of release were targeting a younger audience and although you wouldn’t say they were mainstream they had a widespread release although their audience was probably a little more niche than that. I feel that the audience for our thriller will be equally men and women of any ages over the age of 15 but because of the subject matter and the attention to period detail our film would probably target a more mature audience. Younger fans may appreciate our film if they discovered it girls in particular because of our strong female lead character men would like to court her whereas women would like to be her. As goes for our lead male with older women being attracted to him and younger women might want to watch it just to see him get his comeuppance.

Overall I think our film will probably mainly appeal to over 30s equally male and female and would probably get shown at art-house cinemas and therefore appeal a niche audience. A younger audience of 18- 30 would also like our film but that would mainly be the secondary audience unless they were cineastes.

Who would distribute our thriller (TASK 3)

Either vertigo or warp would distribute our thriller because it is a low budget distributer and our film is low budget production. Our film would be distributed into art house cinemas like other warp films, such as submarine made by Richard Arayoade and Tyrannosaur made by Paddy Considine. Both of these directors are first time film makers so it is already established that warp are willing to take a risk on first time film makers because there is previous evidence. By having these film distributors produce our film would be suitable because they specialise in low-budget art-house films. Another reason we have chosen vertigo to distribute film is that they support independent directors such as Gareth Edwards who is also a first time film maker making them willing to take a risk on us with us being first time film makers. Much like Gareth Edward who editing Monsters at home we have edited our thriller at school. Another similarity between Monsters and Let the sleeping dog lie is Edwards used a £2000 Sony EX3 camera to film and we used a £3000 Sony NX5 digital HD camera. The reason we are not choosing a large company like Universal Studios or Time Warner is because is all because we have a low budget and our films noir is aimed at niche audience whereas there films are more aimed at the mass audience from every generation. This contrasts to our target audience because we feel that our film would appeal more to those existing in the 1990s the neo-film a period and the 1940s where film noir was for the mainstream audience. As well as this these large conglomerates would not produce our film because they specialise in films that are going to take more money in the box office and on merchandise then ours. Our film would probably make its money through DVD sales and television and as such its limited opportunities would mean that a bigger company would not want to take a risk on us.

Vertigo being a British film company would help us promote our thriller because the British population would want to support the British film industry because they want to make it match Americas industry. This is very helpful to us because our film is made in Britain but based in America make its similar to American film noirs. The film Bronson another Vertigo film was distributed in America through the company Magnolia pictures which specializes in both foreign and independent films. This is we think that it would be suitable to distribute our film through this company in the USA because they would be a perfect match for our thriller. This might help attract our target audience because they have a pre existing customer base, also our film deals with murder, drugs and has a strong female character which is similar to Vertigo films such as London To Brighton. This film deals in social realism and was made for a budget of £187,000 with additional lottery funding. The film had a limited theatrical release before finidng its audience on Film 4 and DVD which is probably similar to ours.

Vertigo specialises in genre films and ours is very much genre based being a film noir. Vertigo work in partnership with the BBC and the BFI on several productions and this would be of benefit to our film for distribution. Combining with other companies through cross media convergence means that they can share the costs. This benefits both the film companies as the minimise their risks by cost sharing and also our film as there is more chance that the BBC would show it on TV and help promote the film throughout the UK and Europe. Another example of a film that utilised this is The Kings Speech, although they still needed to sell it to the Weinstein Company in the US for distribution having the BBC’s name attached help sell the film in the UK as they are considered a worthy and venerable institution.

Women Who Kill (TASK 2)

 THE BLACK WIDOW KILLERS

According to U.S. Department of Justice, between 1976 and 2005, nearly 90 percent of homicides were committed by men.

Betty Lou Beets

In 1972, she pled guilty to a misdemeanour charge for shooting and wounding her second husband Bill Lane. Thirteen years later, the bodies of husband number five, Jimmy Don Beets, and husband number four, Doyle Barker, were found buried in the yard of Betty Lou Beets' mobile home in aptly-named Gun Barrel City, Texas. Both men had been shot in the head several times.

Belle Gunness

Belle Gunness was one of America’s most degenerate and productive female serial killers. Standing 6 ft (1.83 m) tall and weighing in at over 200 lbs (91 kg), she was an imposing and powerful woman of Norwegian descent. It is likely that she killed both her husbands and all of her children at different times, but it is certain that she murdered most of her suitors, boyfriends, and her two daughters, Myrtle and Lucy. The motive was greed-pure and simple; life insurance policies and assets stolen or swindled from her suitors became her source of income. Most reports put her death toll at more than twenty victims over several decades, with some claiming in excess of one hundred.

Katherine Knight

The first Australian woman to be sentenced to a natural life term without parole, Katherine Knight had a history of violence in relationships. She mashed the dentures of one of her ex-husbands and slashed the throat of another husband’s eight-week-old puppy before his eyes. A heated relationship with John Charles Thomas Price became public knowledge with an Apprehended Violence Order that Price had filed against Knight and ended with Knight stabbing Price to death with a butcher’s knife. He had been stabbed at least 37 times, both front and back, with many of the wounds penetrating vital organs. She then skinned him and hung his “suit” from the door frame in the living room, cut off his head and put it in the soup pot, baked his buttocks, and prepared gravy and vegetables to accompany the ‘roast’. The meal and a vindictive note were set out for the children, luckily discovered by police before they arrived home.

In our thriller Dayana is playing our Black Widow Killer, Killing The PI Stephen because of a lovers tiff. This subverts to societies expectations because we feel that women should be the "angels in the kitchen" and not the" mad women in the attic" but as you can see from above Dayana is the stereotypical Black Widow killer.

Social groups in thriller (TASK 2)

We have chosen to represent social groups in a number of different ways within our film primarily through the subverting of binaries in gender. Traditional male/female roles were subverted within our film as we chose to show a strong female character and a weaker more subservient male. For Example in a film like A Street Car Named Desire you can clearly see that Stanley has the control and the power. So we decided to subvert to dominant ideologies.


  The male character was also significantly older than the female and attracted to her because of her age and in thrall to her charms hence the power shift. Therefore we also subverted the traditional representation of age by giving the power and status to the younger character. For Example in the stereotypical family dynamic it is the parents/older generation that have the control. so we decided we would give the younger generation the power by having the younger female shoot the older male

Finally we portrayed a negative representation of detectives as our male character was a weak male who succumbs to the charms of the female he is employed to protect and who eventually destroys him. This goes against societies expectations because a detective is portrayed as helpful and wise whereas we have shown him as scared and weak.

TASK 1

The Finished Product (Let The Sleeping Dogs Lie)