Evaluation Question 7 - Looking Back at Your Preliminary Task, What do You Feel You Have Learnt in the Progression From it to Full Product?

Since my preliminary tasks I have learnt a huge amount, not only in film production but in the tricky skill of organisation, getting all of your actors together, filming quickly and efficiently and dealing with the many problems and hurdles that will inevitably appear at every stage of the process.

            When I begun this course I already had a basic understanding of using a camera and Final Cut, the editing software we would be using, but I have learnt a large amount of new features of both that I did not previously know existed. Once we decided that we wanted to include smooth long shots in our film we knew we would need a stabiliser, something that I had never had the chance to use before. My partner was experienced with stabilisers so taught me the best ways to hold and make use of it to end up with a seamlessly smooth shot. We first practised using it in school so by the time we went out on our filming day it had become second nature to use.

           Filming, while it was far more stressful than anticipated, was a very rewarding process. I was in charge of organising and arranging a time all our actors were available so we could film, which was a challenge I had never faced before. As I wrote about in the "filming process" blog post we had some initial struggles, with not being allowed to film in out planed location. However after fixing this it all began to go smoothly, despite some stress over whether we would have enough footage as our actors would not be free for a while after that day.

This was in fact not a problem at all, as once we finished our first rough cut with the clips in order it was just under two minutes, exactly the length we wanted as with our ident and title it would fit the two minute requirement perfectly.

My partner was more knowledgeble using all variety of softwares such as Final Cut, After Effects and Garage Band that we needed to use. This was hugely helpful as he taught me a large amount of new skills in each of these. Such as how to get titles to track the background in after effects, or how to use a combination of shape and colour masks in Final Cut to create the Pleasantville effect.

Looking back at my preliminary task I used a simple series of shots edited together with no additional effects or titles. I included a match of action, shot reverse shot and followed the 180 degree rule, each of these simple techniques I managed to learn from and ended up making use of in my film. We ended our opening with a match on action with the hand on the girl's shoulder, straight away followed by a high speed shot reverse shot between the girls's face and the gloved hand to aid in the building of tension to the climax. These can both be seen below....

Shot

Reverse

Shot


As our preliminary task was short and simple to complete our teacher also gave us the challenge of creating a short 2/3 minute film entitled the package in a group of three. Looking back on that now I can see incredible improvement in my film making. We had problems in The Package with our continuity as we filmed on two serrate days, thinking we had enough clips on the second that we would not need the first and so had not made sure to wear the same clothes in both. This lead to my outfit changing mid scene which can be seen below...


After the shot change to the wide my outfit appeared to change as the person on camera forgot to press record when we re filmed the wide with me in correct clothes.

Below is a more zoomed in version to show the continuity error.










However, The Package was still incredibly helpful as it was my first chance to have a go at colour grading in Final Cut. This turned out to be very useful knowledge as in my final thriller opening both me and my partner spent a large amount of our editing time focusing on perfecting colour.

Overall both my preliminary task and The Package were incredibly influential in my journey towards final product as they gave me a good insight into all variety of transferrable skills, ranging from working with a camera, to using sound equipment, to editing, to collaborating with my fellow students and actors, allowing me to produce a final film that I know I could happily look back on years from now, proud of what my partner and I have produced.

Evaluation Question 6 - What Have You Learnt About Technologies From the Process of Constructing this Product?

In the creation of our film we used all variety of softwares such as...

• Final Cut
• After Effects
• Garage Band 

My partner already owned a Canon HF G25 that we made use of and we borrowed a Røde NTG2 microphone to record our diegetic sound from school.













To clearly answer this question we decided to create a short film with a voice over to clearly display all of the many technologies we made use of in the production our film.

Evaluation Question 5 - How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

To respond to this question, following on from our questionnaire that showed us what our audience enjoyed most about our film, we decided to create a director commentary. This will explain shot by shot the methods we implemented to maximise our film's appeal to an audience.

Evaulation Question 4 - Who would be the Audience for your Media Product?

We want the target age range for our film to be 15- 25, as can be seen from the results of our first questionnaire the majority of people who answered were in the 11 -17 age bracket. As people aged 11 - 14 would not be old enough to view our film, since it has a 15 age certificate we decided to hold a film screening accompanied by a questionnaire, for people aged 15 - 25. We will show them our 2 minute opening and then present them with a questionnaire to see if they would like to watch the rest of the film and find out if so why or if not why not?

Below can be seen a copy of our questionnaire that we handed out to everyone at the screening.

Questionnaire

Please feel free to leave a comment under any of your answers.

What is your age?

☐ 16-25

☐ 26-35

☐ 36-45

☐ 46-55

☐ 56-65

☐ 65+

Have you seen any of the following?

☐ Vertigo (1958)

☐ Silence of the Lambs (1991)

☐ Se7en (1995)

☐ Mr Wrong (1996)

☐ Drive (2011)

☐ The Woman in Black (2012)

What is your opinion on psychological thrillers?

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

We will now ask you some questions about our opening.

Did you understand the opening?

Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Did you like the ident before the start of the film?

 Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Did you like the titles/graphics, in particular the way that they look and the way they are positioned on screen?

  Yes ☐                         No ☐

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Would you want to see the rest of the film?

   Yes ☐                         No ☐

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

If not why not, if so why?

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

We managed to have a good crowd at the screening, filling the room, with each group bring 5/6 people to watch our film openings. It all went smoothly, the openings played one after the other with our audience filling in each questionnaire after that film was screened. Here is photo of everyone deep in thought as they worked their way through the questions.



After the screening I collated the results, displaying them graphically in charts, to make them visually appealing, so easy for an observer to understand.

• As can be seen from these results, similarly to the result in the first questionnaire, psychological thrillers are extremely popular in the 15 - 25 age range, which is very helpful as our film fits well amongst this genre.
• The majority of people could easily understand our thriller and those two who could not it would likely become clear in a second watch or if they were given more than just the first two minutes to watch.
• Most people commented positively on both our titles and ident, giving us feedback such as "I LOVE THEM" and "they are AMAZING"
• Finally 93% of our audience responded that they would like to see the rest of the film,  commenting on our effective methods of building suspense and intrigue, which has been our goal create from the initial idea, as tension is needed in any successful thriller.

Overall it can be seen from the results of our questionnaire that we have chosen the correct target audience 15- 25. This is because not only would the majority of them be open to the idea of the film, since a large percentage of them enjoy psychological thrillers, but they appear to be intrigued enough by our opening that they would actively want to watch the rest of it, if given the chance.

Evaluation Question 3 - What Kind of Media Institution might Distribute your Media Product and Why?

Here is a power point I created to look into the pros and cons of six different distribution companies, to see which would be the most beneficial for our film.

Evaluation Question 2 - How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Our media product shows the representation of gender and age, in the struggles that all young girls go through in todays society in simply walking home by themselves. The paranoid nature of the main girl, while can be viewed as extreme, it is common amongst people of her demographic in this day with terrifyingly high statistics of muggings and rapes on the street. 1/5 Women will experience some sort of sexual assault in their lives with 30% of them experiencing domestic abuse. As well as this mugging rates are nearly reaching 400,000 a year across England and Wales. In contrast to our representation of the victimised young woman we display a negative male representation of the malicious man with harmful intentions. Our decision to dress the male all in black immediately highlights him as a dangerous figure and someone to be vary us, especially as the audience is not able to see his face, giving him a sense of humanity. This stereotype of men being dangerous whilst women are always the victim is actually very incorrect in todays society with 2/3 of mugging victims actually being male.

To display this information creatively and look into similar films who have also tackled the topic of stalking with a variety of genders I have created a short animated video which can be found here.

My free trial for the animation software has now ended, to access it please log in using the following
Username: emma.3000@btinternet.com
Password: alleynsmedia

Evaluation Question 1 - In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

I have made a prezi to compare my film opening to real films that have made use of similar techniques as my partner and I did.

Certification

Classification of a 15 According to the British Board of Film Classification

• Must not endorse discrimination
• Drugs may be shown, but may not promote them
• Should not focus on how dangerous, harmful beavious such as sucide could be copied
• Very strong language is allowed
• Nudity is allowed if there is little detail when it is in a sexual context 
• Sex may been shown and referenced but not in strong detail
• A strong threat is allowed as long as it is not of an extremely dark or sadistic nature
• Violence can be strong as long as it does not linger on the infliction of pain

We had originally planned for our film to be a 12A, but it it is clear to us now after filming that the strong messages of threat and mugging conveyed would raise the rating up to a 15. This is actually beneficial to us as the majority of people in our questionnaire said that a 15 was their preferred age certificate.

Finished Film

Here is the final cut of our finished 2 minute thriller opening

Editing - Titles

We used After Effects to create all of our titles, using their built in track points so our titles followed the camera movement. We used the same font as for out end title, True Lies, in red, adding to the limited colour in the film, putting emphasis on them as they contrasted the black and white behind. We had several difficulties with the titles, such as with our main actor's name, as it is  "Ruby Ballantyne" which was far too long too fit anywhere in the opening, so after trying many places without success we were forced to make the decision to change her name so it would fit in. We also deliberately decided to not give a credit to the actor who played the following man to add to the feeling of uncertainty whether he is really there, or simply a figment of not only the young girl's imagination but yours too as the viewer.

Editing - Colour

My partner and I had the challenge of removing all colour except the girl's red coat and a few other chosen red objects. This proved to be far harder than we had expected because of all of the other slightly red objects such as buildings and skin tones in the background of nearly every shot. We counteracted these problems by having to use a series of multiple colour and shape masks in every shot, to restrict the red to only the few places we wanted it. This initial problem did give us the idea to leave in the occasional other flashes of red, for example leaving in the red bus and postbox. This adds to the style of the film and is a constant reminder of the imminent danger.

Editing - Soundtrack

My partner and I used garage band to create a soundtrack to our film, we imported a low resolution version of what we hope to be the final cut of the film into garage band then began to create the music, to match the edit. We first added two different bass lines which we looped throughout to create a base layer for us to work on, picking out two of the default built in loops. We then added a drum track which was once for looped. Finally we composed our own melody using a variety of string, brass and woodwind instruments, making sure for the brass to come in every time St. Pauls is revealed to the audience. We also used the music to pick out crucial parts of the film, by adding a key change when the follower is revealed to the audience. Finally we added a memorable jingle to go over our ident at the beginning and created a creepy, eerie sounding ending to go on top of our title.

Rough Cut 4

Here is our fourth and final rough cut

What have we done since the last rough cut?

We have focused mostly on the sound

• We have mastered it all, making it sound far more appealing to an audience
• As well we have synchronised all of the diegetic sound that was recorded after the main filming 

Also we added a large amount of shape masks into multiple shots to make sure the coat is the sole thing in colour, apart from a few carefully selected other things

This can be seen here...
Before

After


Finally we sorted the shot of Ruby's feet, deciding to make part of the shop in the background in colour, to ensure we had some red in every shot
Before

After


Final Things to Improve

The same as in the last rough cut we still need to

• Add the rest of the titles
• Fix the shade of the red

Rough Cut 3

Things to Improve

Add the rest of the titles - in this rough cut we trialled a few of our titles to see if they worked, for the most part we liked them, however our main actress' name, Ruby Ballantyne was too long to fit so we will have to swap that for a different name in the next rough cut

Fix the shade of red - as the exposure was different in each shot we will have to individually go through and match the shade of red of the coat, to make them look the same.

Fix the sound - Not only is it unmastered but also me need to synchronise all of the non diegetic sound that we recorded after, such as the footsteps and the gasp with the visuals

Add more shape masks - this needs to be done in shots such as the shot of the left below, to make sure that nothing that we do not want to be red is in colour.

Sort out the feet shot - this can be seen below on the right. It has proved very difficult so far as there is none of the red coat in the shot and there is a large amount of red in the background, so we need to decide how we want to deal with this.

Rough Cut 2

Here is the rough cut of our film...
This rough cut we arranged an audience viewing for it see what people liked so far and find out any ideas they had for how we could improve it.

Things our Audience Liked

• Thought it was very stylised
• Really liked how it was edited, with us removing the colour apart from the red
• Commented on specific shots they thought were clever and the angles we used, such as the low down shot of the footsteps

Things to Improve on

• Sort out the diegetic song throughout
• Either remove the footstep noises or put them for all footsteps
• Maybe re film a shot or two of the friend for the beginning to make the audience be able to relate to her more and slowdown the pace
• Add a fade from black at the start of the film, again make the beginning less sudden

Rough Cut 1

Here is our first rough cut that we completed, all the clips have been placed in order but the sound and the colour still needs to be sorted
Below you can see a quick trial of the Pleastantville effect that we have been experimenting with

Filming Process

We arranged to film Saturday the 21st January, we first ordered two coats and a pair of gloves from amazon for under £50. We then borrowed a boom mic, a digital audio recorder and a S60T Stabiliser from school and used a canon G25 that my partner already owned. We met our three actors in Paternoster square where we had planned to film our opening shot, at 2:30, so we would be able to film through the golden hour. We at first encountered some problems as we were told we were not allowed to film there, or on the millenium bridge, our other main location. However, this ended it up working in our favour as we realised smaller, quieter, back alleys would suit the mood of our film much better than the busy millenium bridge, as these would be a far more likely place for an attack to take place. It also helped us avoid getting other people in the film which would make the continuity hard to keep and we still managed to get a very cinematic shot of St Pauls in the background of the girl crossing the road.

Shot List

Shot #	Loc	Info	Shot Type	Camera Movement	Shot Description
SC.1	1
1		EXT EVE	CU/Mid/Wide	CU->Mid->Wide on stabiliser	Friend taps GIRL on shoulder. (GIRL is in group talking to friends, tracking around)
1b		EXT EVE			Alt. shot GIRL is in group talking to friends, tracking around
SC. 2	3
3		EXT EVE/ NIGHT			GIRL begins to walk home
4		EXT EVE	Wide	Side Track	Side Tracking, FOLLOWER walks in
5		EXT EVE	Mid	Tracking backwards, GIRL walks towards camera	Shot In front of GIRL looking at face
6		EXT EVE	C/U	No.	Track feet
SC. 3	2
6		EXT EVE	Mid	Tracking behind GIRL
7…			C/U		ALL SORTS OF BITS, Man’s body and girl’s face. Editing speed picks up.
13, 15		EXT EVE	Mid		FOLLOWER is not there
14		EXT EVE	C/U		GIRL looks scared, looks behind
16		EXT EVE	C/U		Match on Action, GIRL looks behind
17		EXT EVE	C/U		Man’s Hand on Girl’s Shoulder. Mirror of first shot. Right hand right shoulder. Cut to Black.

1 – Paternoster Square

2 – Millennium Bridge
3 – Street

Storyboard

Here is our storyboard for our film...

Font

Aharoni is the best font 

for our purposes - it is 

bold and clearly readable, 

whilst not being too 

obnoxious or weird.

We also liked The Quick, 

but decided that it did not have a serious enough 

tone for our film.