PART FIFTY

Evaluation Task 7

Looking back at my preliminary task, what I feel I have learnt in the progression from it to the full product is:

From this preliminary task, I learned many skills such as;

Camera movement - How we can create a panning effect or a tracking effect.

Continuity - Ensuring that the transitions from one shot to the other don't change in setting and that nothing is out of place or different to the last shot.


180 degree rule - Filming can only occur on the other side of the line to the actors/set.

Basic editing knowledge - such as cutting and moving the clips from one place to another.


The main task involved more than the Prelim did. We had to create the titles and opening of a new fiction film lasting a maximum of two minutes. 

The preliminary task was an in-camera exercise and I had a simple edit to produce. I can argue that I did learn a lot more about continuity editing for the main production. 

What I learned from the editing process and how I used and demonstrated continuity through:

Match on action - I learned that you should always cut a clip whilst in action, for example, if someone picked up a water bottle, the first shot would be their hand holding the bottle and moving it up to their mouth. It would then cut a shot of the person putting the bottle to their mouth and drinking from it. We used this in our sequence during the bit where the car door is being opened, is cuts from a long shot, to a close up shot of the handle being pulled, and back to a long shot which was high angle as it was shot through the window of the car door being opened.

The use of shot/reverse shot - We did not use shot/reverse shot because we panned through a keyhole which was challenging movement and therefore a huge chunk of the sequence was filmed in one wide shot, portraying their conversation in this way.

The 180 degree rule - We used the 180 degree rule because we made sure the actors were on the same side as each other.

As a result, I feel like I have made progress as we will shortly have uploaded a media product on YouTube, making me feel like I have now become an amateur film maker who understands the process.

PART FORTY NINE

Evaluation Task 6

This is the embedded link to the annotated version of our thriller on youtube.

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EVANGELINE THRILLER LINK

PART FORTY EIGHT

Evaluation Task 5

How did we attract or address our audience?

Our primary audience is young men, most likely in their early twenties. We attracted our audience through conforming to stereotypes about domestic violence. From our opening sequence, our audience may find pleasure in the dominance of the men, for example, if our primary audience was a renowned misogynistic one, the male audience may find take pleasure in this as it confirms to their common beliefs that males are dominant over the weak women.

We also created a third character, Evangeline, who does not subvert or conform to a stereotype as she is portrayed as the mysterious sister who the audience are not sure what will do next. In some ways, for the secondary audience, girls in their late teens, this thriller could please them because they can relate to the mysterious girl. Evangeline presents us with a sense of hope that she could rescue the sister and not conform to the stereotype about girls being weak.

 

There is an added twist in that our female character is empowered in the opening sequence to do something about it, or is she? Personally I think this portrayal of a young heroine as the hero would be the factor encouraging younger girls like herself to watch our thriller. The opening sequece leaves many questions like; is she the next victim or does she function as the helper for others? This is the narrative enigma that we have set up and are inviting the audience to view further.
Also, I think the seriousness of the narrative and the voilence of it appeals to younger men because that is the age where violence is enjoyed most, for example, more men in their late teens/early twenties enjoy violent xbox games 'Call Of Duty' and 'Grand Theft Auto' that any other age group.

PART FORTY SEVEN

Evaluation Task 4

To get an idea of our primary target audience, I have made a fake Facebook profile of our kind of viewer and their interests: 

PART FORTY SIX

Evaluation task 3

Why would your chosen company wish to make your film?

COFFEE FILMS would wish to make my film because stylistically their films have ranged from experimental to art-house, thriller, documentary, black comedy and drama. They are a small independent company based in the UK so would be a perfect institution to target in terms of gaining approval as they specialize in small and low-budget productions.

What other films have they made in a similar vein to yours?
Coffee films have made a short film called 'lucid' which is about someone who is messed up in the head going away. This is a similar idea to our, which is about a girl who is beaten up and taken away by a man who is clearly psychologically damaged and messed up too. The target audience of lucid is probably late teens and early twenties, similar to ours.

How does your film fit the ethos of the company?
Coffee films are based around a low budget, small cast and production team members, which is preferable as it is easier to organise shoots.They also make a lot of their films with first time directors which is ideal because Rebecca and I have minimal experience but lots of imaginative and novel ideas.

How would they market and make money out of your film?
Coffee films is centered around production rather than distribution so projecting our film into superstores could be a tricky task. However, many of the feature films made by them are available to download online or buy from websites such as Amazon.

MORE ABOUT COFFEE FILMS:

Much of their work has settled into exploring the dark, alternative and creative side of humanity, as well as the occasional foray into the beauty of the natural world it exists within. In the immediate future their slate is targeted in three primary areas of drama/thriller. My thriller depicts a female character, who is looking through a keyhole at her sister being beaten up and taken away by a Russian hitman. This, to me, is relevant to the type of dark side of humanity coffee films wish to explore. 

PART FORTY FIVE

Evaluation Task 2

http://prezi.com/4mnjquyxrekc/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

PART FORTY FOUR

Evaluation Task 1

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Our product is in the form of a thriller opening sequence with title and credits. We had to research other title sequences that we felt would suit our style. Here are a few title sequences we looked at to gain inspiration for our own:

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

This is similar to our in the way that it uses upbeat dramatic music. It also shows a credit/title which is alternated with a clip of an object or quick snippet of what will happen in the narrative. This shows the jump cuts matching the action, similar to ours. Watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rigz3Ent44

Our title is written in the same way as TGWTDT is. They share a black background with white/grey writing.

The jump cuts between titles show

 an object to do with the thriller, e.g. ink (relating to tattoos) and an eye (relating to looking through a keyhole).

Here are some other stills from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo similar to our thriller:

PART FORTY THREE

The selection process for our target audience

We decided on the age of our target audience through process of elimination. We knew that we did not want the following for the reasons:

Children and toddlers (Aged 1-15)

We have eliminated this target audience because we do not think the content about domestic abuse would be suitable for persons of this age group. 

Aged 50 + 

The following age may not agree with the genre of our thriller, being an action thriller with lots of violence, it seemed that the older generations may be appalled by this type of behaviour. Typically people of that generation prefer to watch soap operas like Eastenders, Emmerdale and Coronation Street. 

PART FORTY TWO

 Evaluation Questions

What did you do the day before to set up your shoot?
We emailed all of the cast to confirm that they would be available for the shoot times that we needed them. Unfortunately, Fran, who would be playing Evangeline's sister, was unavailable so my teammate Rebecca would be taking her place. We also went into the garage to check that we had all the costumes and props ready for use.
How did you feel when you woke up on the morning of the shoot?
I was a little apprehensive as a lot of changes had been made, such as one of the main actresses being Rebecca, rather than Fran, and this meant I would be shooting most of the shots on my own. I also was unsure if the new location, Cornhill Manor, would look as good as the previous location, LeathHill Place.
How prepared were you when you arrived for the shoot?
Rebecca and I felt prepared as we brought all the props and costume to the location. We brought a hairdryer and towel just incase they came in handy for the underwater scenes, however, as the location did not have a suitable bathroom, we had to adapt the idea to the space. Therefore, we shot through the keyhole into a bedroom, rather than a bathroom so no longer needed the towel and dryer. 

How did the studio set look when you arrived?
We did not need to use the studio in the end because the set would not have been naturalistic for a bedroom scene. Instead we shot in the small annex of Cornhill which had large windows in the bedroom, creating the natural kind of atmosphere we had hoped for. There was also an en-suite bathroom, the sink in which we used to create background noise for a household effect.
How did you divide the roles?
As it was quite a big ask to use the same main man (Michael, the Russian mafia guy) for the whole day to shoot the sequence, we used two brothers who look similar. Alex, the first brother, we used to shoot the close up shots near the beginning of the scene, up until lunchtime, when we used his brother Dmitry to shoot the long-shot car scene. Elisa, who played Evangeline, we used for the whole day as her schedule was not very busy anyway. She was filmed for the 'looking through the keyhole' and 'looking through the window' scenes. Rebecca helped me with the filming when she wasn't needed to play her part of the older sister. Hannah, the Audi driver was only needed after lunch as all of the car scenes were shot later on. 

What do you think you did especially well?
Rebecca, one of the staff and I kept an eye on the continuity throughout to ensure no errors during the editing. The costumes of Alex and Dmitry were the same, so the audience watching will think they are the same person. I also thought the prop placement and make up looked realistic.

PART FORTY ONE

THE EDITING PROCESS

SOUND

We have yet to add in the non-diegetic sound to our thriller sequence. 

There are a few underlying problems with the current diegetic and synchronous sounds. These being, the main character Michael (played by Alex and Dmitri) is speaking in Russian, making it difficult for us to understand what he's saying and therefore we are unsure whether he repeats himself, whether the way we have cut it ensures the dialogue still makes sense, and whether Michael is talking about appropriate and realistic things. 

We have asked some Russian members of our media class to help us with the translation, speeding up the overall sound editing process.

External sound effects we need to add in still include; the click of the door handle and the punch/general fight scene. 

We will also need to find a non-copyright soundtrack to use as non-diegetic music. We will need to be really careful when choosing the songs as we want it to build as the action/tension on screen builds and it has to agree and compliment the mood of the sequence.

USE OF CREDITS(/ THE TITLE SEQUENCE)

A title sequence that could fit mine and Rebecca's thriller well is 'The Sixth Sense'. I like the font of writing, the simple background pictures rather than complicated animations and the dark mood which sets you up for the sort of genre the film is. -