Thanks for taking the time to look around my blogs. This has been a really great project, even if it was challenging at times! My group blog is linked to my individual blog and the link to the group blog is on the right hand side in my sidebar, along with the links to the other members in my group (Megan and Eva.) Other links you can find there are for our teacher's central blog/our whole class blog which is BLK Blog, and it has links to all the other student and group blogs.
On my individual blog you can find all of my individual research, initial ideas and planning which was mainly done in the beginning of the project, before I started with my group. I have also posted work from the preliminary task, of which there is a video and evaluation.
I have linked my final opening sequence and preliminary task at the top of my blog and the group one so that it’s always easily accessible.
I hope you can get around the blogs easily and enjoy looking at all our work. I've organised all my work chronologically on my blog and we did the same on the group blog. I have used labels to identify my Research, Planning, Production and Evaluation that I have completed on my individual blog. We have also done this on the group blog, labelling the posts we contributed to with our name, so all my posts on the group blog are labelled ‘Jess’.
Hopefully you can find everything you need, and thanks, again for looking at my blog!
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Brief for Preliminary Task
A continuity task involving filming and editing:
• a character opening a door
• crossing a room
• Sitting in front of another character and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue with them.
This task should demonstrate:
• match on action
• shot/reverse shot
• the 180-degree rule
Brief for Main Task
The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.
During the whole process I learnt a lot about the importance of planning and organisation:
Deciding on a target audience early on was crucial so that we could adapt our storyline to best fit the target audience, and to make our opening as successful as possible.
These are some of the key things I think helped most with our planning:
We had multiple meetings as a group so that we all agreed on everything, or we could work out any potential errors before actually shooting.
For the actual shooting process:
We held multiple practise shoots, with some taking place at school like the video below:
On the days of our actual shoots so that we could set the camera and tripod in good time, and so we were able to re-arrange any furniture that would have affected our continuity.
For the editing process:
Because we used shot lists, and shot logs whilst on shoot, we were able to quickly capture the precise take we wanted as we had already decided which the best version was.
We put our clips into bins depending on when we shot them so we could easily tell which clips were where.
We put the clips next to each other on alternate tracks so that it was we could to see which clip to edit without having to zoom in.
The evaluation process:
To get a good idea of audience feedback for our film opening, we organised a screening at school, which we advertised with posters and word of mouth. This is so we can test the film out on our target audience, with a large enough group in one go.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Within our opening we used digital technologies, such as:
video camera
microphones, which we put on the shot gun setting
headphones
manual settings on the camera, especially ‘focus pull’
a tripod
pag light - trying the shot with the filters open and closed, before deciding it didn’t create the right effect for our opening.
This was our original opening we edited before deciding it was too ambitious:
This is our group attempting the contra zoom technique on the video camera:
This is the software we used during the editing process:
On Adobe Premiere, we used non-linear editing so we could easily include fades, transitions, and other effects. I’ve learnt a lot about sound editing, such as changing the sound levels so that the transitions between music and speech didn’t appear jumpy.
Advice to pass on would be to make sure you are organised, e.g. charging batteries, knowing who’s going to be responsible for each bit of equipment, knowing how to use the camera properly etc. If we were to make the opening again:
·We could have perhaps tried out a few more effects, or perhaps included some colour grading on Premiere. ·We could have filmed more of the scenes using the handheld technique which may have made the opening more eerie. ·We could film the sequence when Dani is on the phone during the blackout so that the audience would have a bit more understanding as to what was happening.
What I’ve learnt:
Shoots need to be well planned and having set camera positions for each shot (helped by a floor plan) really speeds up filming.
Health and Safety needs to be taken into consideration, especially when outside and in fight sequences.
How to cross fade between sounds and video on Adobe Premiere
Some filming possibilities are unachievable due to location and practicalities so it’s better not to risk anything.
That the camera is very sensitive and picks up lots of small sound/light changes which we may not notice.
Throughout our opening we tried to maximise the attraction of our film to our target audience through many ways:
We played on their fears, by having a kidnapping within the first 2 minutes. It’s a common fear that many people can associate with so it widens our audience appeal. The fear draws people in and so they want to watch the rest of the film. It also plays on the fears of isolation and vulnerability by having the girl home alone without parents.
As our target audience is teenagers, we decided to have the main two characters introduced in the opening being teenagers also. We felt this would help the audience to connect and relate to the characters and the audience would become more involved. As we included alcohol and technology, we also feel this would help attract the audience due to common interests.
Through the use of music, we built up tension and enigma, as for the first minute of our sequence nothing happened, but the non-diegetic music was getting louder, from very quiet and it added atmosphere to the opening.
The pace of our opening was slow to begin with so the audience would question what the plot was going to be, and to create mystery. The opening then becomes faster paced as the kidnapping takes place and the disruption has occurred. This creates an action and hopefully shocks the audience.
We followed the rules of continuity, such as the180 degree rule as we didn’t want the audience to become confused within the first 2 minutes. We decided to follow the traditional narrative structure and we conformed to expectations of the horror/thriller genre by having the girl kidnapped. We wanted to leave the bigger shocks to the rest of the film.
Although the genre is horror/thriller which is a typically male market, I feel that through the use of a strong/rebellious female character at the very beginning, the film gratifies the female audience’s needs as it’s someone they aspire to be.
After finishing the opening, we held an audience feedback session, where we asked each person to fill in a questionnaire:
To attract our target audience to the screening we used posters and we also created a facebook event as facebook is highly used by our target audience:
This is a video of the audiences reactions during our screening:
We decided to make our film a 15, after recieving feedback from a range of different aged audiences and looking at the BBFC's guidelines, but this slightly limits our audience.
Our audience:
Primary Target Audience: Teenagers, Male/Female
Secondary Target Audience: Adults, 25-35
Fans of the horror genre
Fans of the thriller genre
A niche, national British audience
Fans of mystery/crime films
Quite experienced film watchers
Like gritty, realistic films
As we are teenagers ourselves, we felt this would help us create a film that appealed to them as we know lots about them.
Things they like doing/are interested in:
Other films of the horror/thriller genre which target the same audience as our film:
Tormented (A British, Teen, Horror film):
Paranormal Activity (follows the same indie/minimal style of our opening and has a similar target audience):
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our film company, Dark House Productions, is a small, independent company, which focuses on British themes and issues, turning them into more traditional, global narrative storylines.
Our film could be distributed by companies such as Entertainment FilmDistributors, who distributed British films such as:
or another distributor I think would work particularly well is Verve Pictures:
“Verve Pictures is an independent UK specialist film distributor, with particular emphasis on British and independent films.” (Quoted from their website)
I think our film would be shown around film festivals in the UK, as it is a very British, indie film and I think that would best reach our target audience. Although the plot has quite a global feel, and the narrative is quite traditional, the film is set in London and the themes are quite national, so I don’t think the film would be a success globally.
Some examples of the film festivals we’d exhibit at would be:
As well as having the film distributed around film festivals, we would also release the film online for a short while on sites such as youtube, after exhibiting at film festivals as it’s a teenage orientated film, and Web 2.0 is one of the most widely used platforms within the teenage audience. Because it would be available online, it would also be a good idea to provide the film on many multi-media platforms such as the technologically converged iPhone.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Representation Focus: Teenagers
These are the general stereotypes other people have about teenagers:
Troublesome
Criminal
Drugs
Alcohol
Uncontrollable
Examples of teenagers in films/tv shows who follow these stereotypes:
Here are some of the teenage representation steretypes we followed/changed:
suggests rebellion
she appears sober and steady - suggests she's not out of control
not typical drunk teen
put straight in the fridge - she doesn't actually drink it.
Our female character, Dani is wearing a white jumper which connotes innocence, and we made sure Dani's clothing wasn't too girly so that the audience would still see her as a strong character. We created a binary opposite by making our male character wear a dark jacket and trousers. This suggests there will perhaps be a conflict between the two characters or they could be leading different paths.
We have stuck to some of the stereotypes of film as we decided to have the female character being kidnapped, rather than the male character (who is going to try and save her) as we wanted to make the film believable. However, because we don’t show Dani again after the kidnapping, there is still the chance (in the audience’s minds) that she’ll become the ‘hero’ and defeat the Italian dealers.
Another film which shows young women being at the mercy of men, is Hostel Part 2 (Roth, 2007). It also uses the idea of the antagonists being from a different country to the protagonists which is the same in our film:
We also stayed with the representation that teenagers are very technology based, by having Dani text her boyfriend, so the only communication in the opening was via text, which suggests again that she is quite cut off from the outside world.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Top 5 Conventions in film openings:
It sets the scene – location, time etc.
Often introduces the main characters
Establishes the key themes
Has titles – key actors, director, producer etc.
Often includes music – score or modern mainstream music
Leave unanswered questions to intrigue the viewer – elements of mystery
For an opening sequence to be successful it should:
Engage and captivate the audience so that they want to watch the rest of the film.
Establish the time, period or time of day.
Indicate the genre, generic conventions associated with the chosen genre to satisfy the audience’s expectation of the film.
Show/suggest the core themes of the film.
Establish the general pace of the film.
Here is an overview of our opening sequence:
Genre:
Within the genre we chose - teen horror/thriller – there are many key conventions including:
Typical characters – innocent teen girl, the caring boyfriend, strong male leader, the dumb girl, sexual female
Typical events that take place – kidnappings, murder, plotting, police searches, fight sequences between lead protagonist and antagonist, left open ended, nightmares
Typical iconography - darkness, vulnerability, red clothing, set in isolated areas
Typical Themes – play on relevant fears (e.g. a disaster which happened that year), blood/gore, religion (e.g. "The Last Exorcism," "Devil," "The Wolfman," and "ShutterIsland,"),
This is how we used those conventions in our opening:
Narrative Structure:
In general all films follow a similar narrative structure by following the rules of continuity, and therefore creating a story which flows and immediately makes sense to the audience. Most films start with equilibrium, to then be interrupted by a disruption, and then there is finally a resolution at the end of the film. Cross cutting is often used to establish more than one character and to suggest that their paths will intertwine.
These are some examples of where we used continuity in our opening:
Within our opening, we used Todorov’s theory of Equilibrium/Disruption/Resolution:
This disruption of a kidnapping is also shown in Taken:
We used Barthes enigma code, as we had a kidnapping, but it happened in darkness. We also had the boyfriend arriving but we haven’t hinted about what he’s going to do next. We deliberately left a lot unanswered so the audience would want to watch more of the film.
We also utilised Propp’s character theory by having:
a villain - unknown at this point
a princess - Dani who get’s taken
a potential hero - the boyfriend – Josh
By having these different characters it sets up a storyline which the audience will recognise and be interested in. Within the entire film, we will have the antagonists (the Italian mob) and the antagonists (the boyfriend and the best friend.)
Another film which uses similar characters is The Butterfly Effect which has a guy trying to save the girl he loves:
Style & Form:
We had many binary opposites (Levi-Strauss) in our opening, one of which was the contrast between dark and light. The lightness suggests that nothing bad is going to happen, which then means the darkness suggests something bad was going to happen; which it did. The difference in light would also shock the audience as it’s a big jump narratively and visually.
We used subtle superimposed titles, so that the audience would not be distracted from the action. As our opening was quite slow, we didn't want jumps between titles and scenes as it would break the tension forming. An example of superimposed titles in a real film is in Hostel Part 2 (Roth, 2007):
Inspiration:
This is how our opening is similar to other real films:
The style of our film is slow and still, to make the audience feel tense. Because of the lack of action in the opening, and the dull colours the look of the film is quite understated, and it makes the opening appear more realistic. Whilst shooting, we mainly used the tripod so our shots were composed in an exact way and so the audience weren’t expecting the sudden burst of action. During editing we made sure there were no jumps between shots, and we decided to stay on each shot for a while so that the audience got a feel for the surroundings and would get a better understanding of the characters background.
I feel that our opening does the job an opening sequence should because it provides enough of a storyline for the audience to feel involved, but it also leaves a lot of questions open ended so they will be intrigued. It tells the audience who the producer, actors, director etc. are and it creates a mood for the audience to be immersed in through the use of silence and still shots.
