LO1 1.3 : How the use of visual effects enhances film and TV productions

How the use of visual effects enhances film and TV productions

Visual effects are used in movie and TV production often to enhance the content and ensure that it appeals to the target audience.

Often visual effects are used to create unrealistic or hyper-real scenes which is appealing to the audience due to it being exciting to watch clips which the audience would never witness in real life, it allows the audience an element of escapism while they watch the footage.
Stereotypically we normally see the majority of visual effects used in action films such as 'The Shallows', a film following a surfer who is stranded on a buoy at sea and being pursued by a shark.
Throughout the film we see this huge shark in tense and nerve-racking scenes but in reality the shark was fully visual effects, the shark was created as a 3D graphic which was then composted onto layers of visual effects to eventually create the realistic shark which terrifies the audience throughout the film.
In the clip below it demonstrates the various effects that were placed on the clips, we see techniques such as rotoscoping as the sharks movements are all created digitally, alongside green screens that the actors used to film the basis of the shots for the 3D graphic to be layered on top of.

The use of visual effects in this film makes the entire film possible, without the ability to add the shark in digitally the film would've never been able to be shot for reasons such as dangerous to actors, cruelty to animals and unpredictability of the sharks actions.
With the ability to shoot scenes including huge dangerous animals allows the film to thrill the audience and show them scenes which they would have never seen before this once again relating to the escapism the film is enabling by having this crazy visual effects.
Due to it being so realistic the audience can be consumed by the product more and really believe its real allowing them to get more involved in the plot and get more scared and tense as if they were the stranded surfer.

The target audience of The Shallows is 15-25 year olds due to the horror-thriller genre, the aspect of visual effects allows this age range to really be targeted and enjoy the movie more due to the horror aspect it brings to the film, by actually seeing the shark biting the main character the audience can realise the real danger she's in and therefore the film itself can fit into more stereotypes of a survival/thriller whilst portraying such a infamous antagonist.