Final Opening Sequence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JsRsSmRSv8

Agaian, I am unable to directly upload the video of our opening sequence but above is the youtube URL.

Final preliminary task

This is our final preliminary task which basically had the same story and location as our previous one but we've improved on a number of the things we did wrong the first time. For example the first shot is a mid shot which is better than before because now the audience are more likely to focus on the awkward smile between Shaiane and Tayler. Shaiane's hand tapping is shot from further away and the feet in this one look less out of proportion although I prefer the lighting in the last one in this particular shot. The tapping continues on into the next shot and we also shot the shot/ reverse shot at equal angles this time. This time Shaiane also says "I heard this interview's really intense" which makes the audience anxious about it and builds suspense. We then cut to a close-up of my hand scrolling down a list of names. The close-up disorientates the audience and therefore creates suspense. We chose to cross the names off instead of a tick or nothing at all to suggest that they could have been eliminated. The eerie music adds to this suspense and it's build up matches well with the story plot. We shot me from low angles to make me look powerful and scary and we didn't show my face so that my identity was mysterious and suspense was created. We could've executed this better in regards to the shot where I say "this way." because you slightly see my face; it could've just shown part of my body and my hand showing the way. I like the POV shot because it's at a slight high angle making Shaiane seem vulnerable and because she asks "is it this one?" she is seen as unaware which could have connotations of being so about the whole situation which the audience are aware of it potentially being dangerous. While closing the door I look directly at the camera; by acknowledging the audience behind Shaiane's back it lets the audience know that I'm definitely about to do something bad to Shaiane. We chose to blakc out after the door being locked to leave what happens next to the audience's imagination. I edited the lighting at the beginning to look warm because at that point Tayler, Shaiane and the audience are are completely unaware of what will happen next. The mood immediately changes, when we cut to the list of names; I changed the lighting to blue-ish and desaturated which makes it look negative and scary.

Second preliminary task

This is our second attempt at the preliminary task. We used three close-ups of Shaiane which made evident the fact that she was nervous. I think this is effective and i like the lighting on the feet but the nail tapping is to close making it difficult to tell what she's tapping on. There's also a continuity error with the tapping of Shaiane's nails in that shot but not in the nest or the previous. I think the main problem was that the angles at which the dialogue was shot were at different angles; the angle used when Tayler speaks is a lot shallower. This meant that they looked a lot closer in that shot than in the shots when Shaiane is speaking making it not very realistic. If we did it again I think we should do both shots at a less shallow angle because it makes them both look vunerable because they appear more alone.The music and adds to the suspense of the interview and makes it seem more daunting. But the fact that I walk out of the shot is very bad and means the audience miss the action. The fact that it's very apparent that Shaiane's nervous and the use of dramatic music all adds to suspense which just leads to nothing so if we did it again I think we should do something extra at the end like her walking down the hall with dramatic music. I also think we should have some high and low angled shots when Shaiane's name is called to represent her anxiety. I like the last shot though because it shows Shaiane and Tayler as being quite small.  Because we know where we went wrong and can make improvements we'll probably shoot another one. 

Preliminary task

This is our preliminary task which had to include someone walking through a door and dialogue. In the first shots Tayler's face isn't shown and we use a low angle of her walking through the door which makes her look dangerous and creates suspense. Shaiane is shot from a high angle which makes her look small and vunerable and the point of view shot shows Tayler creeping up on Shaiane's back which emphasises her vunerability because she is unaware Tayler is approaching, at this point the audience are being lead to believe that Tayler is about to do something bad to Shaiane. The non-diegetic sound also helps to create Shaiane's vunerability, as well as creating realism, because her senses are some what more blurred by the music. I think it lacks effectiveness because the point at which we see finally Tayler's face doesn't match up with when Shaiane realises who it is. It also isn't sudden enough because we see Tayler's face in the mid shot in which she surprises Shaiane. If we did it again we should've had Tayler's hands shocking Shaiane in the point of view shot and then an over the shoulder shot of Tayler's face. Also, there's too much focus on the paint pallet and brush dropping when in fact it's not that important, especially compared important as the revealing of Tayler's identity. Other problems with this sequence are that Shaiane's face is cut out twice. Once when Tayler says "when are you to paint me then?" and again when Shaiane says "Oh it's the tree outside.", she should've turned the other way so facing the camera. Also the last shot originally had continuity issues; Shaiane's head is facing a different way to the previous shot , so I had to cut her out meaning that the quality isn't good. Another continuity error is that we don't see her headphones fall from her ears, the audience can assume that this happened when Tayler shocked her though. In terms of diegetic sound it was quite a good location because it was quite, but the dialogue didn't flow well; this was due to lack of planning. In terms of lighting the location was bad. Because we were shooting with the light behind the action it made Shaiane's face in particular dark while in other shots the lighting is quite nice, during Tayler's dialogue for instance. Because of all the problems that went wrong with this task we've chosen to do another one. 

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

Our initial idea was to go with the genre thriller. This was because there are a lot of conventions that we could use in our opening, the creation of suspense being the main theme that interested me. However,  we kept changing our minds when it came to the plot of our opening; we just wanted it to establish the theme and a character like the real film openings we researched. So our end product turned out being a thriller but with elements of horror, from the fact that it features a brutal murder. This was an important turning point in the production of our film as we didn't want our opening piece to have to much plot and therefore be a mini film as such.

Our opening uses as well as challenges the conventions of thriller and horror. Blood is the main theme of horror and the whole of our opening is based around it. It suggests that a murder has happened which is a major convention of both genres. At first we used this music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0LwGL8QMCA We chose it because it created the sense that she was feeling negative about what she had done, and that she couldn't stop thinking about it. But it didn't fit in with the conventions that we were trying to create; it wasn't sinister/scary enough which is why, after searching all over youtube, we found and used this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCXUOZ-RLUw. Had we chosen the first music there would be no clear genre that our film would fit into which would have made distribution very difficult because audiences would not know what they're getting.

I think the location, a bathroom, is very good in terms of our genre and it makes sense to have it there given the activity that she is doing; cleaning. We removed any colourful products and paintings to create a more negative scene. The plan was to film at night time and therefore have low-key lighting which is a convention of thriller. However, there were issues with when the location would be available. This meant we had to settle with just editing the lighting to create a negative feel, which I think still looks good in terms of our genre.

The camera angles and style of shooting also relates to the conventions of horror/thriller films. For example, in our video the close-ups and the plastic sheet which we used to film though were designed to disorientate the audience. This worked very well.

Thriller films are often about leaving the audience in the dark about the plot, so disorientating them is therefore using a convention of this genre. We chose to have a young woman as the main character because the audience can sympathise with the events that have happened to her if she's young and therefore presumably less responsible for her actions. The fact that she's female also challenges the conventions of thriller films makes the film more intriguing. However, in practical terms it was simpler for the part to be played by one of our group members. Shaiane is good at drama and I think she played the part very well.

It is through the use of a female protagonist that we challenge the conventions of thrillers in terms of genre.  Usually the woman is the victim but in ours she is clearly the murderer. This will be discussed further in question 2.

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

Because the only character in our film opening is a woman I will discuss how it represents women.

From the opening the audience assumes that the woman has committed a murder and it's clear from the amount of blood and the title that it was a brutal murder. This goes against the normal conventions of a thriller which usually feature a woman playing the vulnerable victim of a protagonist male murderer. Here is an example of a scene from the film Scream which features these conventions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulykPn5ZUVs Even if the woman is the murderer she do so by poisoning the man and not brutally doing so. I think the changes in convention mean there are more questions that the audience want answered and so they will therefore be more likely to continue watching.

However we have not strayed too far from thriller conventions; the way she acts in the opening, the filming style and the camera angles suggest that she has little control over the situation and is as a result vulnerable. I think the fact that we shot using hand-held and using the distorting sheet of plastic played a big part in creating this sense of lack of control. The film appeared dream-like, as if the woman's sight is blurred which means she can't be in complete control. Camera angles, like the one in the last shot which makes her appear small in the space around her, help to add to her vulnerability and even loneliness. The close-up of her eye lets the audience know that she can't stop thinking about the murder and we sympathise with her. Her actions imply her vulnerability; the way in which she deals with what she's done, for instance she turns to alcohol as a way of drowning her guilt and regret. The extreme emotions she feels even effect her body when she throws up after having a drink of vodka. It could be argued that the fact that she can't handle the situation and the drink represents women as weak. 

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

The genre of our film opening is thriller with elements of horror. The plot which I have in mind would follow has very strong conventions of these genres. The film would slowly uncover the story of why she killed someone, and this is like films I've seen during the research process of our film opening. Thriller and horror films are very popular, they are often showed at Odeon and Vue. For these reasons I'd say that the our film would have a mainstream audience. Although we challenge the conventions of our genre we stick to far more many than we challenge.

Maxim Media International represents over 150 quality independent horror titles featuring slashers, psychos, zombies, vampires, demons, and everything in between. I have seen, from looking through their catalogue, that their films are a lot more gory than we intend ours to be. However our film does have elements of horror so I think it'd be important to look more into the company. 

Through their horror film distribution channels they're able to reach the global entertainment market and have licensed film rights to nearly all major territories. Still, their key strengths remain North American DVD release and worldwide Video on Demand. Although they don't internally handle international distribution of their films, they have sold DVD releasing rights in many other countries. In terms of distributing our film I think that even though Maxim Media specifically license and represent horror films, they say in their submission information that they will also review films in the action, thriller, suspense, or drama genres. They aim to support independent films and their distribution is fairly wide so I think this would be a good company to distribute our film. 

Dreamworks Studio is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming. Although it doesn't particularly specify in distributing thrillers/horrors it has distributed box-office film The Ring. This is a big company and so could distribute our film globally. It is definitely a potential distributor but it doesn't have a very large library of thriller/horror films so it wouldn't be specialised in distributing our particular genre so we would chose Maxim Media to distribute. 

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

In response to question four we interviewed five different people and we found out who our target audience is. Candidate A & D are our target audience, I think because the main character is a female who is our age, mid-teens, perhaps they would relate to her and this film more than other audiences. 

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

This is our poster in answer to question 5. Even in this day and age, using posters is still a key feature in advertising film. We got inspiration for this from posters such as this one:

As you can see we took the idea of putting images from the film into text of the title. The images in our title are not as clear as The Ring's, but we could argue that this adds to the dream like feel of the unknown that our film, or at least the opening, has. The darkness that we used in our poster informs the audience of the genre of the film. Our poster also establishes characters and themes; blood and woods, which are both typical conventions of the films genre thriller/horror. The wood path attracts the audience as they see that there's more to find out. We liked the idea of a quote, producers use these to make it look approved by someone else, and the more respected the source, the better. This is why we used The Guardian. 

We chose to use a type of slogan to let the audience know something more about the film and it's plot like The Grudge's poster above. Without the line 'It never forgets. It never forgives.' the audience would know very little about what the film entails and would be less likely to want to watch it. The line 'When two paths meet...' suggests that something bad, a murder by the looks of the blood in the title, happens. 

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4t2aOg0fxA

I am unable to directly upload the video of my 'tutorial' of technical skills I have developed during the course. But above is the URL to the youtube video.

Question 7- Progress from preliminary task to opening sequence

 I would say that between our preliminary task and our final task I have developed many skills in filming and editing. If you look at our preliminary task and the writing to go with it you'll see how many basic errors we made and didn't even have a complete plot. We were very conscious of these mistakes and so felt we had to start over. In total we made three preliminary tasks until we were happy, and then our final task. So we developed many skills through trial and error. These skills include those in filming and editing.

Instances of developments in our filming skills include simple things like actually getting characters in the shot and not crossing the 180 degree rule to more complex things like point of view shots using a plastic sheet over the lens in our opening scene to create a drunken, dreamlike sense. The research we did previous to our preliminary tasks gave us some confidence in camera angles and we can give reasons for every shot used in it, for example the close-up on her eye to show the solemn look on her face and for the audience to sympathise with her situation. Whereas we include a close-up of the painting Shaiane is doing in our first preliminary task, the painting is not important to the story at all and so therefore does not need the attention a close-up shot gives it. Other problems that were made when filming our preliminary task include lack of planning, meaning that the dialogue didn't flow and didn't have any direction. However, before our final preliminary task we wrote a script which meant that the whole thing flowed better. An important skill that we have picked up is to film much more material than we need in our sequence, so that we are free to play around with different shots in the editing stage. Our practise at handheld shooting in the POV shot of our final preliminary task meant that we felt more comfortable at doing so in our opening sequence which consists mainly of handheld shots. I think the use of POV in our opening task is very effective, from talking to people who have watched it they have said they really felt like they saw it from her eyes, as if they were her. This helps the audience to sympathise with the main character of the film. In our second preliminary task we noted that the shot/ reverse shot sequence didn't look right. This was because the angle at which we shot Tayler's dialogue was more shallow than that at which we shot Shaiane's. From this we learnt to consider these kind of details when shooting and therefore shot it correctly the next time, in our final preliminary. In terms of the actual equipment it was pretty easy to pick up the skills on how to use it.

In terms of editing, the skills needed for producing our opening scene were picked up via trial and error during our preliminary tasks. In our opening sequence there are clear evidence of theses skills. They include the basics of match on action, like when she drinks and throws up, to more advanced editing. For instance we reversed the clip of the main title so that it looked more dramatic because the words are revealed instead of wiped away. I don't know whether the shot of her looking and the vodka bottle and picking it up is too long. It's seven seconds and follows two short clips, two and four seconds. However we could justify it's length; she has stopped cleaning and is now taking time to reflect. We used transitions several times in our opening. This adds to the drunken, disorientated sense because it's as if everything blends together, which is what we want the audience to think she is experiencing. We chose for the titles to fade in and out to have this same effect. We had no practise at using titles, but I think our titles look relatively professional. This is because of their composition, the title 'Editor Lucy McCillan-Frost' in particular fits perfectly. The one I dislike the most is 'Megan Armstrong', this is because the text is not framed by anything; the shot moves around a lot causing the tap to be behind it. We didn't purposefully edit it so that it did so, but the music changes simultaneously with the change to the eye close-up. This is very effective and dramatic.

Main Task Shoot Itinerary

Day: February 15th.

Location: Bathroom of a house.

Equipment: Artificial blood, cigarette, lighter, vodka bottle, camera, plastic distortion sheet, grey top, jeans,

incense stick (to create illusion of smoke). Other equipment includes dark eye make-up to make it look like she's been crying and a towel to clean up the mess! Tomorrow when Shaiane puts on her costume we will smear blood on her, this will mean it looks fresh ad therefore creates realism.

Objective: Our objective for tomorrow is to shoot the whole of our opening sequence. This is our basic plot: The woman will be cleaning blood from the bathroom, she will drink some vodka, throw up and then at the end she will smoke a cigarette. We haven't planned specific shots though and when shooting we will shoot the same actions but from different angles as well as shooting the bath and her cleaning the bath in many different ways. This will mean we have lots of footage to play around with during the editing process. We are dedicating the whole day to shoot this so it should be achievable.

Personell: Kate, Kona, Shaiane and Tayler.

Update

Because of the research we did into the suspense built in thrillers, we felt confident doing it ourselves and wanted some suspense in our opening. This is why we built on our initial idea of someone cleaning blood in a bathroom. The new plot is that someone knocks on the door and the character cleaning is scared; this would suggest to the audience that it's the police or someone bad at the door and therefore create tension. She opens the door at the climax of suspense and it's just a sales person. We did a quick draft, it's not the complete plot but here it is:  

We used hand held shots from behind and high angle shots to make the character look vulnerable. The close-up of her face lets the audience know she is scared, in turn making them scared. The shot of someone at the door is good because we can't see her full identity which builds suspense. At the end we had a little play around with the audio, character cleaning up seems to be in a dream like state; she does't know what's going on because of the severity of what she's done. We think we should and could do an opening with less of a plot than this and still get across the genre through music and lighting and angles. So we've concluded that we'll just have her cleaning up the bloody bathroom. This draft has allowed us to build on our skills meaning we'll have even more confidence during the process of our final opening scene.

Location of final opening scene

 

 
After realising the issues with our current idea we brainstormed new ideas and came up with the idea of someone cleaning up blood and mud in a bathroom which suggests they're covering their tracks after doing something bad e.g. murder which would be a convention of our chosen genre thriller. We visited the location today to see whether it'd be suitable and here are some pictures. As you can see it's quite plain and white, which is what we want; we want the blood and the character to be the centre of attention and the location doesn't have much relevance. We have all agreed that we feel confident in this idea and have decided to go ahead with it.

Doubts about our idea

After doing some more research into film openings we realised that our opening idea has too much of a plot. Film openings often establish one or two things; e.g. a character/s, setting, era, theme. For instance in the opening for This is England they just establish the time; by using news clips of 1980's events and a song from the time. The same clips help to let the audience know it's set in England. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trR4hb9PGcY. 

Another opening which doesn't give too much of the plot away is Vertigo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qtDCZP4WrQ&feature=related. It establishes the theme with the use of haunting music and closeups of eyes with high key lighting. The red filter also helps to establish genre, horror, through the the colours association of blood. 

Storyboard

This will be the establishing shot, it shows the two characters in their location and what they're doing. We chose to have only the light on in the room they're in to create a sense of vulnerability; they look isolated and someone could easily be hiding in the shadows.

We will transfer from the establishing shot to this close-up of Shaiane's face using zoom. This creates tension and helps to establish her being the main character. It also introduces the idea of her interest in the attic. She looks upwards after her carer, Kona, asks her what's on her mind which makes it obvious that she really does have in interest in the attic.

The phone rings and Kona goes to answer it, leaving Shaiane on her own. We chose to show this from behind because the carer is not a very important character. It could also add to the sense of vulnerability and therefore tension.

We filmed to angles of her getting the phone. I think if we actually did it we should only have one because it's not that important in the plot.

The character Shaiane plays then goes to the cupboard and take out some pills, we'd show this through the reflection on the mirror on the cupboard. This confirms to the audience that she does have mental issues.

This birds eye view shows her flushing her pills down the toilet. Although it makes her look small and vulnerable i don't really like the shot; I think a point of view shot would look better. And we could perhaps have two shots of her doing this to make the action seem faster and more tense; as if she's going to get caught.

This is a classic thriller shot used in any films, here is a clip on youtube of a compilation of thrilling mirror scenes which has inspired us-  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Off2PXy-M

We'll cut from her head starting to turn to a point of view shot of looking behind her and nothing being there. We chose POV shot so the audience can relate to her.

This is the shot we chose to show her looking at the attic, I think it's effective because she's small in comparison to her surroundings. But then it's a low shot which makes her look powerful so if we used this it wouldn't be so low.      

This is a shot from later in the plot when she climbs up to the attic. The birds eye view means she looks vulnerable.                                               

Opening sequence plan presentation

This is our presentation in which we explain our plans for our opening sequence.

9 screenshots of a film opening

This is a 9 grid analysis of the film Vertigo's opening titles. In parts the titles have been superimposed over the sequence which is what we want to do with our titles. Because we only have a maximum of two minutes for our opening we need all the time possible, not superimposing the titles will mean less time for the actual footage. This opening also relates to ours because it establishes the genre which is thriller. I have picked up from research into film openings, like this one, that the main title of the film comes at the beginning half of the sequence and the director at the end so that's where we'll put ours. 

Se7en opening titles analysis

The analysis of Se7en's opening titles.

Juno opening analysis

This is my analysis of Juno opening which will act as a basic template for our titles. 

Thriller research

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gIuCfnmPQg This is a clip from 'The Ring' which creates a lot of tension through strange happenings. There's a build up of suspense through these weird things because they keep getting more strange, especially after we realise she's alone. The sequence at 1:06 is one used often in thrillers; it is very effective and I think we should use it. Also the shot where she closes the fridge door is good because the audience can't see what's behind the door and when she closes it she doesn't look behind the door, this makes the audience expect something bad to happen because she is vulnerable at this point.

Thriller

In terms of the genre of our main film there are more obvious conventions and techniques in thrillers which we can use in our opening. We also have practice in this genre from our preliminary task and I have done some other viedos at home which show some conventions of thriller. This is one of them which is from the villains part of view. Suspense is created in it by the dark lighting, meaning the audience can't see everything, and that my identity is hidden throughout. I filmed it when it was dark to create mystery and used the torch light to concentrate on certain details such as the head statue and my feet. Even inside, the light makes me look like a villain. For instance in the first shot I used a washing basket to create an abstract shadow which disorientates the audience. Then in the next shot you see me from behind which keeps my identity a mystery and you can also see my shadow moving across the walls and the paintings, none of which you can fully see. This emphasises the element of mystery thus building suspense. Then in the next shot, which is at a slightly low angle, making me look powerful and dangerous, you see the reflection of my shadow. By doing this I'm hiding the actual action, this means the audience can't see everything and so expect something to happen. I made the torch light quickly shine over some scary objects like the cracked mirror, reminisant of a gravestone, and the head sculpture. It's not obvious but I the second shot of my feet is shot through the mirror that the light just passed over. I think I couldv'e done this better, for instance by making the time of darkness between the mirror and the feet reflection shorter to make them more connected. Also, I couldv'e placed the camera closer to the mirror to make the space in the mirror wider so the audience could see my feet more clearly on the grass. In respect to diegetic sound I muted the crunching of my feet on the gravel causing the sound to not be continual. This is because I was trying to create the sense that the character is creeping around and the crunching also ruined the suspense created by the music. Because of the lack of planning the story line, it's misleading when I look behind the dulux tin because it's not an obvious place where a hammer would be. In regards to the hammer, the first shot of the hammer shouldv'e definitely been longer because it's not obvious that the character has found what they're looking for. Overall I really like the lighting in this and may use some of these techniques in our main task.