Finished Film Opening - Mind Games

Evaluation Task 7

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

Comparing the preliminary task to the finished film opening I feel there are lots of things I have progressed on.

We were given a short amount of time to do our preliminary task, we did not plan or research beforehand hence we hand no script or storyboard mainly improvisation. At the time of the preliminary we also had little knowledge on shot types and rules. However, this showed us the importance of thoroughly researching and planning a script, shot list and story board beforehand. In turn this helped us save lots of time as all of us knew clearly what we were setting out to achieve, and helped with time management. The finished film incorporated a variety of shot types and editing features as when planning for the film, we also learnt about effective shot types.

When doing the film opening we also learnt how ‘mise en scene’ can be used to give away a lot or just a little about a character, as the audience pick up on this. When planning and researching films we paid attention to this and carefully selected our costumes too, so our audience would also understand our characters.

We also incorporated sound in our finished product and not in the preliminary. Throughout the course we learnt that sound in the background of a clip can have a real impact on how the audience is feeling, for example, it can be used so that audience sympathise with characters or in other cases to build tension.

Furthermore, I also learnt how to use the editing machines and software properly. When doing the preliminary I was fairly new to the software and so I didn't know how to use it properly. By being able to edit the finished film opening, I learnt a lot more about the editing software, like how to cut and put together different pieces of footage.

Evaluation Task 6

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

By taking media studies this year there are many things I have learnt about the process of constructing all types of media products, from a simple video, a preliminary exercise to learn about continuity in a sequence to creating the final product that is our opening film for Mind Games.

Preliminary Task

To film each of these we used a Sony camcorder, this was new to us as we had never had any experience with this equipment previously, as each of us only for leisure on our mobile phones. With the use of this Panasonic camcorder we were able to learn about effective framing of shots and the importance of each shot type visually.

Strengths of using the tripod was that we were able to film shots that were steady and not wobbling to make the project look unprofessional. This improved the quality of our film as a wobbly camera may remove the focus of the audience from the actual narrative of the film opening. Another advantage of using a tripod was that we could film a variety of high to low shots steadily, using the different lengths of the tripod legs, allowing us to range our shot types and test what fit best in the final piece.

However we did come across a problem when the surface area of the tripod base was too wide and would not fit where we wanted to station. We therefore had to move some furniture around to get film the shots we wanted.

To edit all of our footage we used Adobe Premiere Pro on the editing machines. We learnt how to import and export footage from the camera onto the software. Also, how to cut out parts that weren't helpful to us and how to edit the whole piece together. The software also allowed us to lower the brightness of our film opening. As we proceeded in editing lessons we improved on all these skills.

All this technology helped us to build our knowledge and altogether we learnt a lot throughout the process of creating and editing film. By planning our shots thoroughly before hand on a story board and shot list, we all had a similar clear image of what we were setting out to achieve. However, when we got to our location to start filming we realized some shots didn't work and look effective as we had hoped them too, this lead us to film and experiment with different shot types.  However we learned after that we are also able to manipulate our raw footage to suit us further. For example when we realized we were low on footage of the handheld dream scene we were able to cut the footage up, mix it up and edit it back in to still show continuity.

Evaluation Task 5

Who would be the audience of your media product?

This is Romana Ahmed, she fits our target audience profile as she is a female aged 25. She resides in London  and enjoys watching tv dramas such as Eastenders and Coronation Street. In her free time she enjoys socialising with friends and going to the cinema to watch films. She like watching thriller films, such as Black Swan. Her favourite psychological thriller sequel is Paranormal Activity. When she watched our psychological thriller film she said 

'I really like how fast paced it was and how we only got a glimpse of the mysterious person in white. It's great how all of the characters I saw were female too, that's different.'

This is Faim Iqbal. He also fits in our target audience profile as he is a 18 year old male. He lives in Nottingham and takes an interest in football. When he is not busy he spends his time relaxing and watching movies on his laptop. He also enjoys watching thrillers, his favourite being Se7en. When he viewed our film opening he said 

'A great opening, I liked how it kept switching from the character that was sleeping to in her dream. It was so fast too and the music just added to the tension it created.'

Evaluation Task 4

How did you attract/address your audience?

After doing much research and carrying out online surveys before hand we thought our psychological thriller would be appropriate for people aged from 15-25.

By selecting the costumes for our characters carefully, we were able to project them as young. For example, Kaiesha's character wears a cardigan, side bag with her hair done up high. This makes her look like a younger character. Also my character, wears cow print pyjamas with an over sized hooded jumper, making her look lazy. This would be seen as a traditional representation of a young person as they are usually perceived as laid back, lazy people.

Also the film opening was very fast paced and was located in a forest. This helped us build a tenuous atmosphere quickly, immediately allowing us to catch the attention of the viewers particularly the younger ones aged from 15-25.

Evaluation Task 3

Which company would you want to distribute your film?
Why would this company be suitable?

We think that a smaller independent company would be more suitable in distributing our film, as our film would be on a small budget. This is because if our project was actually to fabricate a whole film, the style of film we would produce is that of the Blair witch project film. Our opening starts with a dream, inspired by the film of the Black Swan, from a handheld point of view, inspired by the Blair witch project.

Smaller budgeted movies that are distributed by independent companies are usually in a British style and take risks that can be controversial among the audience. For example, London to Brighton was produced by Steel Mill pictures, they took risks by basing the film around child prostitution, this topic can be viewed as controversial among audience. Our film may be controversial among the audience as we have an all female cast. Usually a psychological thrillers villain is a male and the female is the usually the vulnerable. However, our villain is a female and so is our main character. The audience watching this may reject this idea as it is not a traditional representation of a psychological thriller.

To distribute our film we would directly advertise to our target audience via the internet, using website such as IMDb and social networking sites such as twitter, myspace, facebook and youtube. This way we will be able to attract a larger audience quicker.

A distribution company that would be suitable for distributing our company would be Vertigo films, as Vertigo is a small company that is successful in distributing small budgeted movies in lots of genres.

However at the time of editing our film we thought that a more suitable distribution company would be Columbia Pictures. Since, this though I have thought about the style of film we have produced and think different.

Evaluation Task 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups? - Gender

Our film opening first starts by displaying the Columbia Pictures distribution company opening sequence and is followed by our production company (Pulse Productions) opening sequence, in turn the screen goes from this to black. On top of the black screen, the credits appear in a typewriter style in white, accompanied by the synchronous sound of the typewriter over it, this was inspired to us by Paranormal Activity.

As soon as the credits disappear from the screen, there is a heavy synchronous sound of breathing and is followed by the non-diegetic sound of the music by just seconds later. The music soundbridges as the scene cuts to a point of view shot of somebody wearing slippers and cow print pyjamas running through the woods. The camera is moving fast and is shaky around the woods indicating the scenes have been shot handheld. After this the screen cuts and we see a female led in bed tossing and turning. The screen quickly fades back again to the point of view shot of someone running in the woods. It then becomes apparent to the audience that the female is dreaming and that her dream is of her running. 

Most of the clip is edited to cross cut from the dream scene to the female sleeping in a disturbed manner we can tell this because she keeps moving in her duvet. This is a traditional representation of a female as females are represented to look more vulnerable, and the nightmare justifies this. 

The camera pans around, as if the person holding it has turnt around, to show a glimpse of a female character dressed in white with dark eyes standing behind the person that was previously running, at this point it becomes clear that this is the character who has been chasing behind. This is a modern representation of a female as when females are being chased it is usually by a psychotic male and females are usually portrayed as the victims. 

Then the screen fades to black and we're shown extreme close ups of 2 characters eyes edited to cross cut from each character very fast. We can tell that one of the characters is the female that is dreaming and the  other set of eyes belong to the stalker, as it is made clear by the make up on her face.The non diegetic music stops as the scene ends on a close up of Saira's eyes opening up and non diegetic synchronous knocking sounds become louder as she does this. After this the screen fades to black again and the title of the film, 'Mind Games', appears again with a typewriter effect.

The camera then cuts to a close up of the female's feet as she makes her way out of her bed to put on her slippers, the same slippers we were previously shown when the girl was running.. We can see also see that the girl is wearing cow printed pyjamas, as previewed before like the slippers. The scene then cuts to a close up of the girls arm as she opens her curtains to let some light in, the sound of the curtain dragging along the curtain rail as she pulls it is synchronous. From this we can see that the girl is wearing a red over sized hooded jumper. Red is seen as a dangerous colour aswell as a very feminine colour, so this is a traditional representation of a female. However this is contradicted when we get a better view and see that the jumper is branded with a sports logo. So it can also be argues that this is a modern representation of a female as sports is usually associated with males.

After this the camera cute to an establishing shot of the hallway where another character is knocking on the door. As a audience we realise that the non-diegetic synchronous knocking sound was actually the girl knocking on the door. At this point that sound becomes diegetic and the character travels across the hallway to answer the door. The camera then cuts to a close up of some letters on the floor that the girl picks up and sorts through before answering the door.

As the girl opens the door, the other girl walks in, indicating that they're friends. Her friend is dressed is a cardigan and has a side bag on, with her hair tied up high. Her look contrasts with the other females, as she is dressed and ready showing a traditional representation of a woman. Whereas, the other character is still dressed in her sleeping attire, indicating that she may be lazy. This is therefore a modern representation of a female as females are usually portrayed as hard working.

Evaluation Task 1

Teacher Feedback for Film Opening

Rough Cut

What needs to be done before the final deadline - Plan.

Our group has decided to film everything again from the start. We are instead going to try waking instead of running in the dream scene, and will be adding in sleeping scenes to make it clear to the audience it is a dream. We also need to edit in our production company and credits throughout the film opening.

The film opening will be mainly focused around the dream now, as in the second scene there was too much dialogue and bad acting skills, this would have bought our overall grade down. In addition to our rough cut, we have thought about changing many different shot types as they make the over film opening boring. We will look at a range of different shot types to add more suspense to the project.

Audience Feedback

Today we had an initial screening, where we watched all the other groups film openings and they saw ours. After watching them we told the groups what went well and what needed improvement and vice versa.

From this activity we have collected audience feedback. The audience said that the music went well with the dream scene as it was very fast paced. However, they said that we needed much improvement.

They suggested that we added in some sleeping scenes to make it more clear that the character was having a dream. They also suggested that we take out unnecessary objects in the backgrounds of different scenes as we would be graded lower on our framing. As we have nit completed a rough cut, the audience also said it was difficult to suggest improvements.

Teacher Feedback for Blog

Psychological Thriller Title Research

Research for the Chase Scene

                                                      

                                                                                                                                                                           We researched what a chase scene usually looks like in a thriller, and this allowed us to pick up more tips for our short film opening. We found that in many cases the victim being chased was female and that there would be a lot of camera movement, indicating that the shots were taken with a handheld camera. We feel that this sort of camera movement really builds up the tension and are now using a hand held camera for our film opening.

Storyboard (Part 2)

As we found doing the storyboard on an online website difficult for the first scene, we decided to do the storyboard for scene two by ourselves on paper.

Testing the lighting and computer effects

The original footage.. The edited footage.. As part of our planning we decided to go to our location with a camera and film a brief part of the opening roughly. We then went back and edited the footage with the computer effects to make it look darker as we want to do with the real film opening. We found that as we went out on a sunny day, the sunlight was very hard to edit and make it look darker. We will therefore take this into consideration when filming our finished project. This experiment also gave us an indication as to where that characters should be positioned in this scene.

Music

We have chosen this music to accompany our chase scene, this is because we want the chase scene to seem fast paced, and dubstep music like this can give it that feel. We found this music by typing in 'non copyrighted dubstep' into youtube.

Costume Research and Planning

Script

(Aisha running through woods with the Unknown character chasing her)

(Heavy breathing sounds)

(Non diegetic sound of knocking)

(Saira awakes in bed and walks to open the door to Chelsea)

Chelsea (walking in):

Oh my god, you are not going to believe who I just saw?

(Saira silent with stunned facial expression, walking into the kitchen, Chelsea follows)

Chelsea:

Hello?

Aisha:

Huh? Uh, who?

Chelsea:

Jake with Emily!.. (Saira silent).. Hello? Why aren’t you interested?

Aisha:

I had that dream again.

Chelsea:

How many times have I told you, it means nothing.. you just have an overactive imagination. Stop watching so many horrors! Anyway.. can you believe it? Jake and Emily!? We have to tell Jess.

Aisha:

Yeah.. whatever.

Chelsea:

Seriously? I thought you would be a lot more interested, but no it’s all about that dream.

(Aisha sees the unknown figure in the window, close up of her facial expression)

Aisha:

Did you see that!?

Chelsea (looking  behind):

See what?

Saira:

It was them from the dream outside the window.

(both looking out the window)

Chelsea:

I’ve told you it is just a dream.

(Camera perspective changes showing Saira and Chelsea looking out the window with no dialogue being heard)

Words associated with Psychological Thrillers

Production Promotional Video

Storyboard (Part 1)

This is our storyboard for the dream which is the first half of our opening. The dream will be a continuous hand held point of view shot. As the storyboard has been done one the computer it was difficult to add in all the details, therefore some details have been missed out that will be included in our opening, For example Aisha looks down at her feet showing her muddy slippers.

Shot List

1.      Pulse Productions opening

2.      Fades to black and hear heavy breathing

3.      Point of view shot – running through the woods

4.      ‘Saira Ali as Aisha’ – over the point of view shot

5.      180° turn – point of view shot

6.      Jump cut of shadowy figure getting closer

7.      “Tara McGuire as The Unknown” over the point of view shot

8.       Knocking sound over the jump cut (sound bridge)

9.       Extreme close up of eyes opening – title shown, still hear knocking.

10.  Close up of feet getting out of bed

11.  Camera tracking – following feet downstairs, close up.

12.  Over the shoulder shot, ‘Kaiesha Stewart-Haugh as Chelsea’ over the top

13.  Pan midshot of Chelsea walking in

14.  Mid shot of Chelsea sitting down and making herself comfortable

15.  Mid shot of Chelsea talking

16.  Close up/mid shot of Aisha looking uninterested

17.  Cut to Chelsea looking surprised

18.  Cut to Aisha saying ‘I had a dream again’ – Long shot making tea

19.  Cut to Chelsea, two shot saying ‘It is just a dream’ Aisha looks out the window and sees ‘the Unknown’

20.  Eyeline match looks again and ‘The Unknown’ is gone

21.  Chelsea walks over to window, two shot ‘did you see that?’ – Aisha

22.  Point of view shot (The Unknown) – speech can’t be heard

Character Profiles

Plan

Aisha (played by me) will run through the woods & turn around and will see a unknown character (played by Tara) standing in the woods. The unknown character will get closer and closer (jump shots), in the background a synchronous knocking sound will play adding tension to the scene. The knocking will get louder and it will cut to a extreme close up of Aisha's eyes opening. The knocking will be continuous leading into the next scene too. There will then be a close up of Aisha's feet as she gets out of bed and a close up of some muddy wellies in her room showing this as the object of significance. The camera will then track alongside Aisha's feet as she runs down the stairs to open the door. There will be an over the shoulder shot from the outside of the house. Aisha will open the door and Chelsea (played by Kaiesha) will walk in. The camera will follow her across the room in to the kitchen and she will start talking about her personal life. Aisha will look uninterested in Chelsea's personal life, to this Chelsea will ask 'what is wrong?'. Aisha will reply "I had the dream again, it must mean something".  To this Chelsea will look uninterested and will continue telling her story. The next shot will be of Aisha looking out of the window and again see the unknown character in her garden. She will then ask Chelsea if she saw the character too but Chelsea will go to look out of the window the unknown character will not be in view. Finally, there will be a  point of view shot from the unknown character looking at the window towards Aisha and Chelsea arguing but no sound from the argument will be heard.

Recce

Our group has decided to film out opening in the nearby woods in John Cabot. One of the characters will be run through the woody path and this will lead to a dead end, where there will be some kind of cliffhanger.