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Evaluation Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In conclusion. I feel as though this project has been the most educational for me, and definitely the most interesting because of my enjoyment in watching and making films. Since our preliminary task, I feel as though my understanding of films and how and why the work has improved. I have tried to apply this new knowledge to each of the four stages in the project:

As well as all of this, I think I have especially learnt how to work as part of a team. Not only have I developed my ability to work with other people in meeting and discussing to distribute the work fairly but I have also been able to do individual tasks before sharing them with the group.

Evaluation Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The technology we used to construct our opening sequence can be broken down into two sections: hardware & software.

Hardware

For our shoot, we took a lot more than a camera, we used a:

• Canon Mini HD Camcorder – to film with
• Batteries – to power the camcorder
• Tape – to record our footage onto
• Tripod – to take most of the steady and high-angle shots
• Paglight – to illuminate any shots if necessary
• Shotgun microphone – to record dialogue and some sounds
• Headphones – to hear if the sound was good quality

 

Because we were using a digital camcorder, we had several options that we could change, e.g. shutter speed, white balance, etc. but when it came to our filming, there were only three that we really used:

1. Auto-focus, which I used when filming the opening cutaway of the flowers in focus before the vase suddenly became to focal point.
2. Manual-focus, we used this for several shots in our sequence when we wanted a shot to be blurry such as the shot of the back of the head at the beginning.
3. Aperture, for most of our sequence, we kept our aperture setting low so that only a small amount of detail was in focus; so that they had a short depth of field.

This project has taught me several techniques that I was unable to do before; I can now operate a paglight to illuminate a shot to create the desired effect, I can change the settings on a camcorder to create artistic effects and I record sound and dialogue with confidence.

Software

During post-production, we used the non linear editing software - Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 on two PCs:

Using my prior knowledge of the software, I was able to capture our shots, put them onto our timeline, order them and crop them down. However, for this project, I had to learn several new techniques in this software:

• How to create and customise titles – I created the Reverse Pictures logo in Premiere Pro by: linking two titles of ‘everse Pictures’ and a reflected ‘R’, adding a mirror effect to them and changing the opacity on them individually to make them fade out separately.
• How to customise effects – for example, for the dissolve shot of Dawn rocking, we had to slow one of the recorded shots down, make it overlap the other shot and change opacity to create a smooth dissolve.
• How to be selective with sound – most of the shots in our sequence were muted so when they cut to shots with that had sound, the static was obvious, as a result, we had to fade the sound in and out on every shot.

If I had to pass on advice to anybody undertaking this project, I would give them the following three tips:

1. When planning, consider how each shot has to be taken and if it’s possible to accomplish it. In our sequence, at 0:37, the shot was meant to be wider but we couldn’t because it was being filmed right next to the wall.
2. Don’t be afraid to experiment if you have enough tape. The shot of our flowers was improvised; we did not storyboard it because we didn’t think of filming it in that was during the planning stage.
3. When filming a shot, film as much of that as possible. In editing, it is a lot easier to work with shots that our too long as opposed to shots that don’t have enough footage to cut to. It will also give you more options for the final product.

Evaluation Question 5 - How did you attract / address your audience?

When making our sequence, we tried to address and appeal to our audience in a variety of different ways, some of which were that:

• The narrative of our sequence can have the use / gratification of making the viewer ask themselves what they would in the same situation. The fact that the protagonist is in the same group as our core audience really helps with this.
• The way that our film goes against conventions makes it entertaining to guess how the film’s narrative is resolved, or even if Dawn gets away with it.
• The realism of our film could help the viewer suspend their disbelief and enter the world of the film with relative ease, especially since the film is set in a location which many members of our audience may be familiar with.

In addition to all this, we held a screening to members of our target audience and got them to fill in a questionnaire like the following:

After we read through the comments, we found out that the three things that they liked most about our sequence were:

1. Two people said that they liked the slower, less conventional pace.
2. Eight people said that they liked the music and sound effects.
3. Eleven people said that they liked the cutaways and other art-house style shots at the beginning of the sequence.

Evaluation Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

When we were planning our sequence, we thought about who wanted to appeal to. There are several audience groups that we wanted to target. The core group was female, young adults; a typical member of this audience would probably be something like this:

As well as this, our film would have several other, more broad audiences. The three audiences that I think would like our film the most are:

1. People who enjoy non-mainstream films
2. Students older than the age of 15
3. Fans of the thriller genre, but not of gore

Evaluation Question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

Our production companies were Reverse Pictures and Papercut Productions.

Reverse Pictures makes artistic, stylised, independent, British films. The name comes from the idea of reversing roles and conventions.

Papercut Productions specialises in British independent, crime and psychological thrillers. The name has connotations of injury.

With these two production companies, we would aim to reach a market of people who are grown up and enjoy a thrill but do not like seeing blood or gore (which is why we deliberately didn’t use any broken glass, fake blood, etc.) We would also want to reach a British market because of the themes that may not be popular in internationally.

Ideally, we would want another company to distribute this film for us. I believe that a British-based company that has distributed artistic films would be ideal.

I think a company such as Icon Film Distribution or Momentum Pictures could distribute our film to cinemas. This is because they have both distributed films similar to our own (not mainstream, artistic, independent, thrilling, etc.), e.g. Momentum has distributed Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Lost In Translation; Icon have distributed The Butterfly Effect and Paranormal Activity.

Because our film isn’t mainstream, it would probably only be shown at an independent, British cinema such as The Phoenix in London which describes itself as having “a renowned film programme of new releases, independent, foreign-language and specialist films”.

Alternatively, we could release our film online. Due to recent technological advances such as faster broadband speeds and more internet websites, it’s possible to distribute a film on a whole array of sites for very little money or absolutely free. The best site for this in my opinion has to be YouTube. It has an incredibly large reach and has users of all preferences in film genre and style. The evidence for this:

• One video on YouTube has more than 172 million views.
• YouTube.com reaches about a quarter of all internet users.
• Recently, YouTube added a section for filmmakers to upload their films.(See below)
• When I uploaded a video to YouTube and didn’t share it, etc. it received over 21,000 views.

Evaluation Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular groups?

Our opening sequence goes against several genre conventions; one of which is that in most modern thrillers, with a killer, they are almost always male:

Our sequence however is closer to an older style from the ‘40s or ‘50s - femme fatale; films like Sunset Blvd., Double Indemnity and Vertigo where the killer is female and the victim is male.

Despite this, we followed some gender stereotypes with Dawn:

These are stereotypes because female characters are usually presented as:

• Liking the colour pink.
• Liking flowers.
• Being passive.
• Being distressed damsels.

Evaluation Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our fiction – film opening sequence is meant to come the beginning of a psychological thriller. Because of this, we had to follow various conventions, such as setting up enigma for the viewer. This is why our sequence follows Barthes’ theory of the five codes; the action, semantic, enigma, referential and symbolic codes. For example:

To make the plot of our film different, we decided to experiment with Todorov’s narrative theory; how films start in equilibrium before a disruption occurs. Our sequence goes against this; a man has been killed and Dawn is trying to deal with the corpse.

However, the difference between our film and others is that most thrillers (especially horror and action) begin with somebody (usually female) being killed, such as in the film Scream (1996, Craven)

Additionally, because we wanted our audience to know that it was a thriller, we had to include some genre conventions but to keep our film experimental; we deliberately subverted some of them as well:

• Conventions we followed - disturbing music, somebody has been killed and the killer doesn't want to get caught.
• Conventions we subverted - set at daytime, the killer is female and the killer is not alone

As the brief was for an opening sequence, we also had to follow the conventions of an opening sequence. I believe that we achieved the four main conventions that I previously wrote about:

1. Both characters are introduced, Dawn the protagonist and the dead body she has to deal with.
2. From the shots of the curtain, it shows the reader that the sequence is set at dawn (which we further anchored with our film’s title.)
3. Our sequence has titles; each of us has a title for a role we helped out with. Tom Rivlin is the name of my friend who was our test actor on the second shoot.
4. Our soundtrack suits the content of the film, it is slow and calm but is unsettling in the context of our film about a dead body.

When thinking about the project, our group decided that we wanted our opening sequence to have an art-house, calm and slightly unnerving style:

Typed Up Shot Log

For every shoot session, we logged our shots to help us in editing. This is one of the shot logs from our final shoot that I typed up (because our handwriting really hard to read)

 

Sequence is Finished

After several weeks of working on our production, our opening sequence is finally finished! After 24 hours of filming (broken down into three 8-hour shoots) we got plenty of footage to edit into 3 sequences.

Sequence 1

This was our first attempt at filming and editing a sequence. The main purpose of this shoot was to find problems that arose and to find solutions to them so we wouldn't make them on the actual shoot.

Sequence 2

This was our second sequence which was meant to be our final sequence. Unfortunately, due to unforseen circumstances, the actor playing the dead body couldn't be present for the shoot. Instead, we used this as an opportunity to get more shooting and editing practice as well as a chance to make some small changes to our script slightly.

Sequence 3 - The final sequence

Reflections On Final Shoot

After two test shoots to prepare, I am highly confident of the results of this shoot. We all agree that the footage we shot was of a good quality and because we had practiced so many times, we finished with about an hour to spare to shoot extra footage with the remaining tape and time.

Overall, I am looking forward to capturing on Monday and seeing the results of all this work.

Experimenting With Titles

Recently, I did some experimentation in Paint Shop Pro and created three images of what our opening title for Reverse Pictures could look like. I decided that it should have a minimalist, professional look so I went for simply white text on a black background every time. All I changed was the typeface and layout.

Reflections On Second Test Shoot

Apart from the fact that we couldn't film our actual footage for the final sequence, I think that this shoot was useful. We managed to resolve some problems such as discontinuous lighting and we finished reasonably early so I really think that on our actual shoot in a week’s time, with our actual actors, we will be able to film good footage at last.

Preparing For Second Shoot

Tomorrow is our second shoot. Although this was meant to be our main shoot, due to unforeseen circumstances, our actor won’t be available so we have to use our friend who used to do Media, Tom. Hopefully we can use this as a test shoot and possibly get some shots of cutaways to use in our final sequence?

Break for Hollywood

Just a quick post. Tomorrow, I'm going to Hollywood on a Media trip where hopefully I should get some real inspiration. This means that until Monday 22, there will be no posts, so bye for now!

Reflections on First Shoot

I think that today went well, I really think that we captured enough footage (thirty minutes on tape) and we managed to quality control each shot. On Monday, we'll see how it all looks but I think that it went well for a test shoot. Also, I decided to bring my camera to the shoot to take some photographs and video:

Script for 'Dawn'

After doing some research into the style of scripts and screenplays on Script - O - Rama, I decided to make a script for 'Dawn' in the style of an industry screenplay. This was later corrected with the help of my two colleagues.

Releasing Equipment of First Shoot

Our very first shoot is tomorrow and our equipment has been released to us. I'm taking the paglight and production folder so I have to be up pretty early to get to our location (Kerry's house) so we can do a good eight hours of filming with the daylight.

Group Meeting 4 Reflections

Although we didn't have to have this meeting, I think that it was necessary to meet up again so that we could all work on our script and props list together.

Group Meeting 3 Reflections

I think that using this meeting for constructing a storyboard was useful because we needed one anyway to help us on the shoot. Additionally, we had to do this storyboard as a group so that we could all agree on what our sequence should look like.

Group Meeting 2 Reflections

I think that this meeting went very well. It felt a lot more productive than the first one and I think that it helped to type it up as we were talking and that we could take turns in doing it. I also think that it was useful to type up what we were doing in the meeting as we went along.

'Arty' Visuals

After our meeting where we decided that we wanted our film to have an 'arty' / experimental style, I isolated some stills from other media (that I and Sheera had seen) and noted down what effect each technique could create. The full post is here.

Possible Music For Sequence

At home, I have several CDs of music for drama and action, etc. After listening to some of them, I thought that this would be the best for the sequence that we have in mind.

Cold Storage - Drama Action Suspence 2

Group Meeting 1 Reflections

I think that our first group meeting was more productive than I was expecting. We settled on a good idea to develop I think that our idea will be successful because:

• It fulfils the brief of being a 2 - minute opening sequence to a fiction film.
• It's a reasonable simple and practical idea which we can film and edit with the technology.
• It takes the other technical aspects such as mise-en-scène and camera aspects into account.
• The idea appeals to our group and I believe that we can all put a lot into this project.

After some further discussion, we've decided to each do some work (mostly involving research) which we can do until our next meeting.

Personally, I'm going to do some research into films that have a similar style (especially camera work) to the style of the idea that we went for.

Individual Idea for Opening Sequence

For the task to think of some initial ideas that we could present to the group, this is the best idea that I've thought of so far:

The sequence begins with an intense flash of light. Then, we realise that this is the inside of an apartment and the flash came from a crime scene photographer's camera, which we saw from a corpse's point of view. Also in the apartment are two detectives talking about the crime when one of them goes over to a window to look outside and think. From outside, we see a person looking up at the window just as they are taking of a blood-stained glove.

Culturally British Thriller Research

To get some inspiration, I've looked up the top five 'culturally British' thrillers according to the BFI:

1. The Third Man (1949, Reed)
2. The 39 Steps (1935, Hitchcock)
3. Don't Look Now (1973, Roeg)
4. The Ladykillers (1955, Mackendrick)
5. Brighton Rock (1947, Boulting)