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.