12E8 - Rhianna, Grace, Ellen and Amy

Our whole group were extremely pleased with the outcome of our opening film sequence. Though there were some areas that proved particularly challenging, for instance- editing the title sequence and creating the eerie effect we wanted. Another area we found demanding was locating an interesting track of music to run parallel with the titles and make them seem more menacing and dark. Additionally getting the right doorbell sound effect, which rung as the protagonists hand entered the water, ended up proving a lot more time consuming than we had anticipated. It was difficult to get both the audio and the action to play simultaneously and create a realistic bridging affect, that didn't come across obviously edited to our audience. However we did achieve and develop our piece so much more than we ever imagined, and believe that on the whole we got a positive outcome from our efforts. Our progress developed so much from our poorly constructed, and unimaginative preliminary sequence which was lacking in variety of camera work and creativity of ideas.

Planning in Reference to... Production,Inspiration,Genre, Context & Audience in planning discussions

Who do we envisage producing our film...?

The type of company we pictured producing our film wouldn't be big budget hollywood, but something a tad more low key, a company that could explore, market, and would initially be interested in a gritty, traumatic thriller film like our own. We pictured a an independent company, who would want also want to create a serious, hard-hitting film, rather than a clear goal driven, plot predictable big revenue movie. (We pictured companies like 'Film Four Productions' 'Lions Gate Films' 'Summit Entertainment' 'Overture Films' or 'Hannover House')

What was the inspiration behind our concepts and ideas...?

Many TV dramas that had had us frightened,gripped and intrigued, quirky credit sequences, and thriller films gave us  the inspiration for our film. 

- We'd seen many serial dramas on channel four and itv, that had incorporated the conventions and concepts of the thriller genre, in a naturalistic but scary way. we were inspired by programmes such as, 'Five daughters' 'This is england' 'Prime Suspect' 'The Little house' etc, all of which touched serious issues in interesting ways.

- We looked at various credit openings to get a feel of how typical sequences worked, but these also gave us many rebounding ideas of our own, for ways in which we could make our credit sequence, much more interactive and creative! For instance, the opening credit sequence of the E4 comedy drama 'Fresh Meat' the names of those involved/ the cast appear on/around different elements of the student house they live in, this and the parallel music really help to set up the tone of the programme, and we wanted/were inspired to, create the same affect with our own opening sequence! 

Genre,Audience and Context

In order to accurately include key conventions of the thriller genre we studied and analysed many similar openings that fell under the same category, this helps us initiate what we would need to defiantly include before we could start throwing about more inventive concepts. (We watched clips from  films such as 'Sherlock','Inception','Jaws' and 'Physco' and some other media students previous work). We also debated putting our film into a different time frame/context, because we felt it had made some of the other films more affective and could attract a wider audience more effectively (if it was set say 20 years ago some dramatic elements may seem more dramatic as the audience would not be able to necessarily relate to this time frame as well making them feel disconnected and disorientated) we saw our audience as being mid-late teen/young-mid adult - a fairly wide range, but one with whom could deal with the issues we intended to explore. 

The showcase: audience feedback.

In our first and only showcase, every member of our Media class saw our unfinished film and made comments. A lot of the comments were on things that were not intentional in our piece: for example, it is mentioned several times that the last frame freezes at the end of the film for too long, but this was only because we hadn't yet cut the last sound item on the timeline. Other things discussed was the lack of credits, which we have yet to put in, and the sound. These are two areas in which we are aware we need to work, so we were very happy with our evaluation results.

finishing the editing

after a lot of planning and hard work we finished editing our sequence and managed to get it down to approximately 2 minutes. we planned how we were going to edit before we started and we took it turns to do things so we all had a go at using final cut. when two of us would be editing, the other two would be looking into music for our film opening. we looked at music on the Internet that wasn't copyrighted and we also experimented with GarageBand to see if we could find a sound that worked well. we didn't have much luck when looking into music on the Internet so we looked at sounds that worked well together and our film. we noted these sounds down so when we start making our music on garageband we already have an understanding of the program and the sorts of sounds that we would like to use.

consideration of topic

during our discussions as a group over the last few weeks we thought about the topic of our film. as it is to do with a paedophile and rape etc we realised it is quite a sensitive topic and we have to make sure what we include in our opening sequence is suitable. we have to consider that this topic could be quite upsetting for some people therefore we decided to make very clean cuts and only to hint at the themes we are trying to portray rather than being to explicit.

week 6

this week we have continued to cut our footage down and we also have started to order it. we decided to edit the footage as we put it in order rather than order it and then edit it as a lot of shots had to be fragmeted for our montages therefore this would make it easier. we have also been thinking about music for our opening sequence and what sort of music we will use and if we will make it or not.

week 5

during week 5 we focused on the credits and started to edit our film. we had to first upload all of our filming on to the computer and then we opened it on final cut express which is the program we are using to edit our footage. this week we have also spent a lot of time on our independent blogs and making sure we are all up to date. we started to choose the shots we wanted to use and cut them down as we had a lot more footage than needed as we experienced with different types of shot and angles for each scene.

Making the credits

  To make the credits we decided to use stop motion so we could animate objects using photographs to add something interesting to our opening sequence. we came up with the idea of using magnetic scrabble on a fridge as it was easy to move around and therefore animate. We used a different path for the letters coming together for each name so it was varied. It was a challenging task in some aspects as it had to fit together well and flow properly for it to work but the outcome was successful. One problem we faced was after we took the images we realised there was a change in shadows between some of the images which didn't look as professional as it could of. We decided that if we have time at a later date we could re-do this but as we were all pleased overall we thought it was not a big problem for the moment.

Filming Our Foundation Project

Above are some  photographs of us filming some of our foundation task (at one of our shoot loactions) . We tried capturing each piece from as many different angles as possible, as we intended to  allow ourselves extensive versatility when it came to editing the clips together, to create a continous effect. We also wanted to develop a wide range of shots for our montage sequences aswell, to make them alot more dramatic and have a much larger impact on our audience. With heinsight we realised that our ‘Feed The Fish’ preliminary task, perhaps lacked a varied and creative range of different angled shots, for example : high, low,canted,point of veiw,reverse  and so on. So we wanted to learn from our previous mistake, and try to take a more challenging approach to our filming.

Our filming schedule

Because we needed to book cameras and organize filming our actresses at several different locations, it was vital we had a legible, clear filming schedule as above.

Our Pitch

This is the basic plot line to the opening sequence of our thriller film. Set in the 21st century, where the real horror and chills are drawn from behind the doors of suburban normality, the safe havens and places children feel secure and at home. Our protagonist, a sixteen year old girl, occupied by running her everyday stresses away with a relaxing soak, idiotically allows an intruder, posing as a 'helpfull' handy man, into her house. Rushing to turn off the taps and shut out her problems, she leaves the suspicious stranger downstairs. After hanging back for a few minutes and eerily inspecting her childhood photographs, he ascends the staircase, getting closer and closer to something he is far too familar with...

How our opening is conventional...

From our individual analyses of opening sequences, the four of us concluded that there were some conventions that the vast majority of opening sequences used, and that we should therefore use these as rules/guidelines when creating our own sequence. These were:

1) Montage. Montages were commonly used in sequences we analyses, and this was a good technique that created a lot of suspense and drama. In our storyboard, we planned to use this as the main antagonist is walking up the stairs, by incorporating flashbacks of different girls. As none of this has dialogue, instead of using the audio from the video we thought we could make this into a montage, with emotive music as a backing track instead.

2) Dialogue is allowed, but only a little. Most of the sequences we looked at had little to no dialogue, but a few did. Our sequence fits with this as there is a short exchange between the girl and the man, but it does not last long and does not dominate the sequence.

3) Introduce the character. Our sequence introduces two characters, but you can tell the man is the main character as we equate the girl with several other girls through use of flashbacks.

4) Introduce the narrative. Our sequence does this, showing the film to be about a rapist/paedophile and his crimes.

5) Have credits! Although we did not storyboard this, we have decided to use the idea of fridge magnet pieces and stop motion to spell out the names of the people involved in the production of the film.

STORYBOARDING

The above was our completed storyboard, but to make it easier to read, see below. 

Media Storyboard

Props and Costumes

Group Meeting #4

Today we tried to sort out our props and costumes. The main character was to be wearing a dressing gown to appear vulnerable, the pervert was to be wearing a hat low over his eyes to seem dodgy and a luminous jacket as part of his disguise, and all the other characters were to be wearing school uniform from various schools to show their age and innocence. We also needed a framed photo for a certain shot we wanted to do, and any book.

Group Meetings #1 #2 & #3

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Group Meeting #3  

In this meeting we started to roughly storyboard with Post-It notes, trying to figure out what we needed to do and what kind of shots we could manage. We didn't get very far, and planned to continue this upon our next meeting.

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Group Meeting #2
In our following lesson, with a rough idea in our heads, we decided to start thinking about locations and our cast: what we could realistically do. We realized that our family members could play a big role as the part of the paedophile and the young girls (siblings), and that as it was set in a house any one of ours would do. We also started thinking about different shots we could do that we liked, and started to briefly order our thoughts so we knew what to film. 

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Group Meeting #1

This was our first lesson concerning our final video for our coursework. After having been briefed by our teacher, we were given some sugar paper and started to brainstorm everything, from which genre we should do down to as specific as signs on doors. We ended up wanting to do a thriller, with somewhat of a rough idea: we thought we could do a paedophile inviting himself into a young girls' home, with the audience knowing his history of paedophilia but with the young girl not having a clue. We had a good idea of how to present this, by elongating the scene of him walking up the stairs, making a montage where each footfall reminded him of a different girl at a different time. 

Own response to Brief

The brief we were given we were all very pleased with. We all were able to have an input of our ideas and we were happy with the fact that we thought we could do the brief to a high level. We all had ideas which we put together to come up with a good idea. The group were pleased with the brief and thought that we were able to present a well edited, well filmed and well acted film.

Our Group