Stolen final cut

Survey

This is the link to our survey for our final product. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dERMQmJGUi15NWJjU0VRZkdXbWF1UlE6MQ

evaluation

In what ways does your media product develop or challenge forms and conventions for real media products?

—I think that our media project challenges conventions of physiological crime thriller and develops them. Before I made my media project I looked at different films to see what kind of genre would suitable to create I also took into consideration what our research said this would help me to understand what key conventions I would need to include. The films that I looked at the most was ‘The disappearance of Alice Creed’ this film includes the disappearance of a girl, who was abducted by two men. I believe this was an effective thriller film because it was a best seller, I looked at some of the conventions included in this film and tried to include them in the best way I could into my media product. At the beginning of our film there is a detective scene, this develops the conventions of a crime thriller, the idea and inspiration behind this idea were crime/murder mystery crime television programs like midsummer murders, we also wanted to add to the physiological convention so created this kind of effect when both of the characters are in the bedroom. The only way that our film challenges forma and conventions is in the way that our titles are laid out, throughout  out title sequence they follow the  traditional conventions apart from the title of the whole film is the last one to come up, so it is right at the end of the opening. From the research we found that most films do not do this, however some do, we thought that if we did it this way it would create a stronger feeling of tension and uncertainty.

         How does your media product represent particular social groups?

—Our media project represents particular social groups in the way that males and females are presented. In          the very first scene there is one male and one female. The male is the stronger character out of the two and the female is more venerable.  This idea also carries one throughout the rest of the opening, where the males has control over the girl he has kidnapped. Our film is very stereo typical as the films we had researched also have the male as the stronger and more dominant character. The way our characters are dressed also show this as the antagonist is dressed in dark plain clothing this shows that he is a mysterious character, while the antagonist is dressed in a white dress, this shows her innocence and purity. We also used the camera angles to show the authority of the male character by using lows shots to film him, therefore making him look larger and stronger, we also used high angle shots to film the female, making her look smaller. 

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

—         After doing some research into film institutions I have come up with two production companies that I think would be suitable to distribute my media product. The first is hammer film productions, I think this production company would be suitable because they have produced films like The Resistant. This film is a thriller and has features that are similar to my media product for example it includes a female character being stalked by a male, it also includes a detective scene similar to the one we have included. This film also focused on the characters feelings and emotions through a variety of shots. I also think that Cinema nx would be suitable because they produced The Disappearance of Alice Creed which was a film that I looked at a lot for inspiration throughout the process of our film. The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a typical thriller film also including the kidnapping of a girl, however in this film it is done for money and in our film it is clear that the man has done it because he is a physco therefore reinforcing the genre.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

         —After reviewing the criteria for certain age certificates of films on the BBFC website I would personally rate our film at a 15. This is because it has the potential to be a scary film but does not involve any gore or graphic scenes that would make it an 18. We had done some research in the planning stages of making our film and from our research had agreed that it would be suitable to aim our film at ages 15 and above, we also found out that most of the people that found the idea of a thriller film appealing were male, from this we found ourselves aiming our film mainly for males over the age of 15. Even in the opening of our film it has conventions of a horror and has potential to be quite scary and disturbing to anyone under 15. furthermore the Disappearance of Alice Creed is also a 15, because this film is similar to my media product I think it is suitable. From our research we also found that we needed to aim our film at females as well. As we had both female and male main characters we felt this would attract both genders, although I still feel it would appeal to males more as they are the more dominant gender throughout the opening. 

How did you attract/address your audience?  

During the planning stages we created questionnaires  and surveys to give to people in order to get a wide verity of opinions from a wide verity of people.  This helped us to gain knowledge of what kind of films people enjoyed watching and would pay to see at the cinema. From this we found out that most of the people we’re aiming our film at enjoy physiological thrillers or crime thrillers. This gave us the opportunity to look at both genres and see which one appealed to us more. In this process we found that a lot of films combined the genre of physiological and crime to make a hybrid, this is what gave us the idea to do the same. I am confident that we did well when looking in the what audience we wanted to attract and if this was not done as well we wouldn’t have come out with a product that wasn’t as good as ours is. To improve our film I would have put regular updates of it on Facebook in order to get feedback as we went through the process, this way we would have been able to work with our audience as much as possible and incorporate their ideas as well, because we got some feedback when we posted our final cut that we could have changed if we received the feedback earlier in the process.

Audience feedback

Why people enjoyed our opening –

It really gripped you into the story at the very start of the movie and you are left wondering what will happen to the character's next.

The music and atmosphere were good, however maybe the beginning interview could have been shorter.

Excellent. Very chilling, scary and tense. My attention was held throughout. Wanted it to carry on to find out what was going to happen. The lighting and music especially set the scene really well.

It was full of suspense and had a very chilling atmosphere to it. The editing was spot on and the filming of it was aesthetically pleasing. I felt it achieved its objectives of being a thriller film due to the feelings it gave me whilst watching.

told you what the film was going to be about. made you think about what could happen. made you want to go watch the film.

Why they found it engaging –

You want to know what happens to the character's in the movie, does the girl escape and does her mum ever get her back.

told you what the film was going to be about. made you think about what could happen. made you want to go watch the film.

Yes as right from the beginning, with the deep pessimistic tones of the music, I was eager to find out what was going to happen next. The police interview, although I could sense had been some what rushed during the process of filming, actually set the scene brilliantly, engaging the audience by putting them in a state of wonder as to what the two subjects were talking about. The title's section I thought was done excellently and engaged the audience as it only gave you tiny not-giveaway snippets of the plot which is clever.

You want to know what happens to the character's in the movie, does the girl escape and does her mum ever get her back.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

—         Form the continuity task that we did before we started the planning process I learnt a lot about filming and how difficult it was to just get a simple shot.  From this we realized that continuity is the most important thing to get right when filming, we also learnt about the 180 degree rule, this difficult when we were first introduced to it but throughout the process of filming it got easier. When creating our opening I found that the camera was easy to work with but personally found that I struggled with the editing process. When the clips were imported into première pro I found it easy to cut them and re-arrange, but editing the titles in order to make then more interesting I found difficult. A problem we faced when trying to upload certain clips after filming was that our mac froze disabling this process and forcing us to wait until the next day to talk to our teachers about the problem. I have learnt from this to always be one step ahead and don’t leave anything to the last minute otherwise it can put pressure on you and effect your final outcome.

         

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

         —From the beginning when we were given this task I feel that myself and my group have made significant progress. In the planning stages of our task although we did plan allot we thought that it would be easier to see what worked if we were actually went out and physically did it. When we came to actually filming our task we realised this was not true, as we were struggling to find different and versatile shots. Another thing we struggled actually filming the shots, we wanted to be versatile with our filming at first so included pans, and zooms but after uploading this footage realised it was shaky therefore couldn’t use it, forcing us to re-shoot. We also didn’t plan how long one shot should be so when we uploaded all of our shots we were about 30 seconds short of footage. From this we realised that we should plan exactly what we are going to film and how long it should be in order to have the right amount of footage.  As our plan was weak this caused us to waste a lot of filming and editing time re-thinking what shots we could do in order to create a more exciting and gripping film. Our opening changed dramatically from our original animatic, again reinforcing that we didn’t plan as much as we should have. Looking back on my preliminary task I feel that I have learnt many different skills including being able to plan accordingly, camera skills and editing skills. If I was to do this task again I would make sure that I spend more time on the planning stages, I would also take the time to look at premier pro and see what facilities were available to me, this would allow me to plan what editing we could do and ensure that we left our selves enough time to do it. 

Music and Titles

For our opening we have found it difficult to find the right music.
we have all looked for some indivudually but found that they were all either not tense/scary enough or to horror like. our music needs to be scary yet build ths tension, preferably and single intrument like a piano, flute, violin as we have found from our research this is common in thriller films. durring my search for music i have found very up tempo music, this is not right for our opeing becuase we want it to set a dark tense atmosphere.

Durring the editing of our film we have thought about ways to make our titles more interesting, with the help of our teacher we came up with the idea to judder the words when they appear on the screen, this will add a very chilling effect to the opening, our group have seen films that include this in the title siquence and feel that it is suitable for ours too. We have thought about ways to creat this effect and have realised that it would be very time consuming, as we have left it untill quite late we are unsure weather to continue this idea. this is the film se7en which includes this effect.

Editing 28th March

On the 28th of March our group edited together the dective scene. We found this quite easy as we had alot of different shots from different angles becuase we used three different cameras it was easy for us to do this. We also used a varity of shots such as mid shots, close ups and extreme close ups, this allows the audience to connect with the characters. We felt these worked well when we edited the film together. We also feel this gives the opening a more tense and interesting atmosphere.

Survey

Here are some question we may consider when asked for our survey

1. What do you think the genre is?
2.why do you think this?
3. what time of media instetution might distrabute our media prodct?
4. why do you think this?
5. who do you think is the target audience?
6. did this media project target you?
7. do you feel you conected with the characters.

Filming police/detective scene

We organized to use two drama teachers to act out a detective scene for the beginning of our opening. Mr Smith will be the detective and Miss Wilson will be the mother of the school girl that has gone missing. We organized a lunch time when the two teachers were free and filmed it in Mr Michie's office. We had a brief short script for them to follow but some words were changed so it would flow more naturally when we filmed the scene, we wanted to detective to be firm with the mother but also have sympathy for her, and we wanted the mother to be sad and genuinely worried and concerned for her daughter. we feel that because they are drama teachers they will feel comfortable playing the role for our film.

The script for our film was this
Detective - "so, i need to know exactly when you last saw her, do you remember?"
Mother - (pause) "of course i remember, she looked so lovely"
Detective - "mrs ....., we need to know, its vital for this investigation"
Mother - "it was sunday 18th, she left at 2 o'clock to see her friends thats all i know"
Detective - "thank you, and don't worry, we will help you find your daughter"
Mother - "please, you have too"

We filmed this by all three of us being having cameras in deferent places at the same time. Therefore we didn't have to repeat the scene too many times in order to get enough shots, the only difficulty with this was that sometimes another camera was visible in one of the shots therefore we had to move around alot. We took a variety of shots including mid shots, close ups and extreme close ups, in order to get a different perspective from different angles. Filming this scene was successful overall and didn't take as long as i expected it too. After filming this we uploaded them onto the computer and edited them into our film, this will give our film more of an exciting edge to it and will allow us to take out some of the static shots of Charli's legs and body at the beginning.

These are the pictures of the script and the shot list.

solution to problem

as soon as our group released we had a problem with filming we emailed our teachers and agreed that our deadline would be in the easter holidays, this way we would be able to re-schedule when we would film, and not have to rush the filming and editing. Although the other groups have an earlier deadline than us we had no choice due to our actors. We planned to re-shot on thursday but our actors were not available on this day so we chose saturday instead. we have found it difficult to judge when the actors are free and when our group is free, we also understand that this is not the actors course work and they have their own commitments. This has been our main struggle throughout the process. however we are going to film on saturday and we have also taken out a mac from school in order to upload our clips and edit them on thw same day when we are all together. This way we can give in our finish copy to our teachers on the 12th of April.

Probelm with filming

We were planning to re-shoot our clips on saturday but due to Luke pulling out 10 minutes before we were scheduled to film this means that we were forced to cancel bcuase we needed both of the actors to film this part of the opening. The caused us to re-schedule to thurday, this was a difficult decision becuase it is a day before our deadline which means we will not have very much time to edit our film, but this was the only option we had as people in our group had commitments on the other days.

Filming Schedule

Saturday 24th- Afternoon  CANCELLED DUE TO UNAVAILABILITY OF ACTORSLuke (kidnapper) and Charli (heroine)

• Luke and newspaper
• Luke going upstairs
• Luke and Charli- reactions

Monday 26th- Lunch time
Mr Smith (police man) and Miss Wilson (mother)

• investigation continues scene

New Schedule for 24th:
Thursday 29th  CANCELLED DUE TO UNAVAILABILITY OF ACTORS 

New New Schedule: Saturday 31st

Luke (kidnapper) and Charli (heroine)

• Luke and newspaper
• Luke going upstairs
• Luke and Charli- reactions

Shot list for Luke's newspaper scene

Shot list

Establishing shot of study
Point of veiw shot od newspaper
Close up of face - smirk
Point of veiw shot, putting newspaper on table
Close up of face, waits, heres noise
Long shot, luke gets up and walk out of room

This scene will only be short but we feel that it will add something extra to the whole opening and make it seem reaistic. The reason the man has a smirk on his face when he reads the newpaper is so that it shows he doesn't care and that he finds it rewarding that his actions have got so much attention.

Planning the police interveiw scene

We have been thinking about the detective scene alot becuase we want to make it look as realistc as posible, the thing we hacve thought about so far are, the different location for the interveiw, such as the offices we could do it in, we had a look at different one including the georagphy office and mrs tanners office but came to the conclustion it would be best if we used mr michies office as it was the right size. we also planned a script for the police and the girls mother, this involved a short converstaion. We also had to plan a shot list, this involved shot reverse shots, close ups, mid shots and establishing shots.
For our location we had to make some changes to the room such as moving the table into the centre of the room and putting two chairs either side, to make it look more like a police interveiw room. there is also a filling cabnet and a telephone so the room looks more like a police room. We also have peice of card folded over that has the detectives name on it which is 'Detective Smith' from our research we founf that scenes like this usually have a name sign similar to this. All of these things help with the mis-en-scene and create a more realistic feel to the opening.

The pictures above are the images of what the room looks like. We researched some pictures of police/detective desks and most of the pictures were of desks with alot of papers on them so this is the effect we tried to create with the desk. We also found that they usually have a notebook and a pen. For the dress of the polioce man we knew that he should be dressed smart with a tie, and a jacket to ensure he looked profesional.

The shot list for this scene.

Establishing shot of the room

Mid shot of the police man, showing the name tag

Shot reverse shot of the mother, mid shot, showing name tag

Shot reverse shot to police

Shot reverse shot to mother

Shot reversshot to police

Back to mother, close up

Black screen titles

Story board for police scene

This is our story board for the police interveiw scene. we thought it would be a good idea to do a story board becuase it woulod help us to gain a better understading of what we would like to happen in the scene. In the first scene shows the girls mum and the police man sat at a table, the police man is asking her basic questions like 'when did you last see your daughter?' It then changes to girls mother expressing her saddnes about the situation, then is another shot about, it will then show the two characters again having a convosation, then again to show the sad expression on the girls mothers face.
This will either be shown at the begining of the film through a television or just as extra footage, if it is shown therough a television then we will have a 'breaking news' flash the televison first to show the importance of the situation to the veiwers. It will be on in a room with the man watching it and turning it off half way through to show that he doesn't care about it.

Ideas for extra footage

In our lesson our teachers watched our film and we all agreed that a good way to improve our film would be to introduce dialouge in it. Thisd would give our film a more realistic atmosphere. We decided we should have the girl shout something when luke walks into the room that she is trapped in, saying something like 'what are you doing?!' or 'who are you?!' and then luke would reply to her. Before we just had a reaction shot of the girls face looking scared, but thought that this was unrealistic and boring. we would also need to think about if the girl knows the man, becuase if she did, then it would be a different reaction to if he was a stranger.

New Ideas

During our lesson we received feedback from our teachers and we also came up with new ideas. the feedback from both of our teachers was the same, we need to have more of a reaction form from our female actor Charli when she is in the bed, our group agreed with this and have decided to go away and re-shoot this clip in a different way in order to create a more realistic feel. We also needed more of a obvious story line there fore came up with new ideas to help us with this. Together we came up with the idea of the girls mother and father being involved in the opening, this would have them being interviewed or being shown on the television we thought about ways we could show this and came across a clip of 'Doctor Who' where a similar technique was used. If you skip to 3:07 the use of the tv is shown. We would have the girls parents talking directly into the camera, to show that they are addressing the viewers, half way through this we would then have the man turn off the tv to show he does not care even though he knows that the girl they are looking for is in his house.

We thought the television was a good idea but soon realised it would be difficult to do so decided to work on the interview idea. This would involve a police man asking the girls parents basic questions like when she last saw her daughter ect. This would involve a meeting in a small room similar to a police mans office were they would talk about the missing girl. This will help us to get our opening up to 2 minutes and will help build the story line to make it more exciting.

We also came up with another idea to help build the story line of our film. We will use this if we cant our idea of the interview doesn't work out or if we need more clips. This was to have a newspaper article on the from page regarding the missing girl. On the article we would have a picture of the girl in the dress that she is wearing in the shots of her in the bed, this will allow the audience to relate the girl on the newspaper to the one in the clips. We will have the man reading the newspaper for about 3/4 seconds and then have him throw it one a table as if he doesn't care, a similar thought to the tv scene. 

Editing

last lesson we started to edit the clips that we had previously uploaded onto our computer. Our groups didn't have any major issues when editing the film because we were confident in which clips we had to delete and which ones we could keep. Although after cutting out certain clips we discovered that our footage didn't last for 2 minutes, however we hadn't added all of our titles and we also had more to shoot which would fill up the time.
We decided to make our titles lat for 4/5 seconds, this is the same time lengths as most of our clips to have a continuing time length, from our research this shows that this is the expected time, also we have named our production company upside down productions, this title will involve the word upside down spinning onto the screen and having a logo of a old fashioned camera, the logo is below.



The font of the production company is different to the font of the titles for our film, this is what we found from our research.
We haven't decided on a colour for our titles yet but we will most probably stay with white on a black background to keep it simple and relevant to a thriller film, form our research we have found alot of thriller film have black and white titles, red is also common but we thought this would relate more to a horror thriller rather than crime.

music ideas

Our group have found it difficult to try and get a background music to go with our film. we have looked at many different music websites but we felt tha all of them didnt suit our film. We all agreed with what the music should sound like but just couldnt find anything over the internet. becuase Hannah plays the flute we thought that i may be a good idea for her to play quitely in the background of our film but soon realised that this would be difficult as Hannah is limited to the amounf of songs she can play. We have recently found a peice of music on the interent which is a flute, but only the first 20 seconds we feel would be appripriate for aour film so feel that we should cut it agfter thihs amount of time and then repeate it thoghout the 2 minutes of our film. Although we also have digetic sound that we need to imcorporate into our film towards the ending so we would need to think about how this would work with the music.

About our filming

A few problems have occured to do with the filming process these include trying to find a time when we can all film, this has been difficult becuase there are five of us that have to be free at the same time. After achool is hard becuase it means that we have to miss out on doing homework or coursework for other subjects while we film, and filimg is very time consuming becuase it takes a long time to get the perfect shot. We aslo found it difficult to find a time when our actors Luke and Charli were free becuase this was also taking up there time when it isnt even one of their subjects. Although we organised when we were goibng to film very well. Hannah came up with the idea of creating a facebook page where we were able to connect with eachother whenever we needed to, this made it easier to find a date when we were all free and happy to film. this also allowed us to share information and pictures with each other so we were all up to date.on top of this, we were able to ask other people in our group if we were not sure about something ensureing that everyone understood the task they had been given.

Filming

On our first day of filming we started at 11 o'clock. to beginwith we filmed charli's shots in the bed, to propare for this we did her make-up and positioned her how we have planned acourding to our story board. We also positioned the camera the way we had planned acourding to our story board and shot list. We did not struggle when filming the shots but when we watched it back we realised that most of our shot were shaky and the lighting was not the same in each one, this told us that we had to try to not move the curtains and try to hold the camera more steady. Thrghout the filming proccess we took pictures of what we were filming in order to get our continuety right next time we filmed it. With every shot we filmed it about 10 times in order to get the best shot we could.
When we came to the next lesson after filming we uploaded the shots onto a computer and realised that they were even more shakey that we first thought, overall there is only one good shot that we can use from the whole day of filming, this sows us that we have to be extra careful next time we film in order to get the shots right. we also think that it would be a good idea to try different shot angles to see how that could have an effect, and to not use as many pans and tilts but to just use more cuts, we think this will make it easyer for use filming it and make our opening look more proffessional.

Props

We wanted to create an effect of blood on charli's hand were she has been hand cuffed, for this we used red oli paint, i had previously tried this out and thought that it looked effective. Also we created a bruised look on charli's lower arm to create the effect that she had been there for a long time. to do this we used dark brown, blue, purple and green, eye shadow, we had also previously tried this out and decided that it looked effective. We used hand cuffs that danni had to handcuff charli to the bed, we thought this gace it a more scray and thriller like look to it.

filming schedule

Sunday 21st of January
My house - most of the shooting will take place in my spare room for Charli's scenes, and also in the study area for Lukes scenes.
we will start shooting form 11 in the morning untill 2 for charli's secenes and then 2 onwards for Lukes scenes.

Questions

these are some questions that we asked our target audience in order to gain a better understanding of what they want in their films.
Audience 1:

1. Do you see this opening working through looking at the storyboard?
   Yes.
2. What do you think is good about it?
   The opening is quite confusing as you don't know anything about the characters- why they are there, why they have been drugged and why there is a killer. This makes me curious as to why this is happening, so it makes me want to see the rest of it.
3. What do you think is bad about it?Even though it's a good thing knowing nothing about the plot (making you want to know what is happening and why), it makes the opening quite confusing. You should make a point as to why this is happening.

Audience 2:

1. Do you see this opening working through looking at the storyboard?Yes.
2. What do you think is good about it?I like the cutting back each time to the black screen to show the titles- I think it's really effective as it adds a dark tone to the film.
3. What do you think is bad about it?Perhaps add some music when they are alive- when they are killed take it away to add drama.

Audience 3:

1. Do you see this opening working through looking at the storyboard?
   Yes- could do.
2. What do you think is good about it?I think a positive would be good thriller content- murder and drug use.
3. What do you think is bad about it?Maybe there is too many black screens. That cutting away from each scene could be annoying- however text against a black background would show the titles more clearly.

Male Antagonist

For the male antagonist, we all had roughly the same idea of what he would look like so it was just a case of finding someone that fitted it, we came to the conclusion that luke stanley would fit the role well because  of his height, for the whole of the opening Luke's face will not be shown as when he is on camera it is a point of view shot from Charli's prospective and that will be in soft focus. Luke will be dressed in dark clothing e.g black/navy blue jumper we are aware that this is very cliche but we hope to make our opening unique in different areas.

Female Protagonist

For the role of the female protagonist we decided that we wanted a girl to fit the stereo typical 'innocent and pure' character that is often used in films. We came to the conclusion that we thought Charli Moody would fit this role very well, she has medium length light blonde hair, and is quite petite. Through the makeup we use on Charli we could reenforce a pure and innocent persona, with red lips and pale skin and soft eye make up. we thought we would have her wearing a white dress to emphasize the purity further. Her clean pure clothing and make up will contrast with the room which will be dark and dirty to create an idea about the rest of the film.

Storyboarding

Our group came together in lesson and created a story board, this helped us with our shot list. it gave us a rough idea off what the story line would be so we could think about the kind of shots we could use to create the right effect. when we brainstormed all of our ideas we realized that it would not be simple to come up with a story line and we would have to think about it hard, we also thought about how we could incorporate props, location and actors into our idea. I think our group is making good progress overall but we need to ensure that our time is used effectively in order to meet our deadlines.