Evaluation of the whole production: Undisclosed Desires! Part 1

(Title Screen)

Reworking the Familiar

We have now completed our two minute introduction to a film from the research to the filming and now just recently completed the editing. Our two minutes worth of film is not only finished but it has taught our group many valuable skills along the way.

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

The first piece of research we had to do before starting to come up with a storyline was the genre of the film that we wanted to make. We decided the genre to be Thriller as Thomas Rivet, Harry Read and Myself all are passionate about films which hold you in suspense and give you an adrenaline rush. We then decided to research into the Thriller conventions by looking at what was written on the internet and books as well as analysing films such as Silent Hill and Cloverfield. I learnt many thriller conventions and at the same time, got to watch other Thriller films, such as The Happening and Vacancy. This helped me discover the best camera angles or cinematography, sound, lighting and mise en scene to use in our own film. As a group, we then collaborated our ideas about the thriller conventions and decided which ones we wanted to add and what other ideas we had which could enhance our film or maybe even challenge the typical thriller films and conventions that most people would associate with in a thriller.

Firstly, we decided on what conventions we wanted to add to our film and whether to challenge any thriller conventions or go with the conventions that have been proven to work. One convention that we decided to keep was to have the two main characters seeming to be ordinary citizens who do not normally get into trouble. As well as this, I wanted to show as a Director, that the couple were happily together within a calm and relaxed style of life - therefore I chose to add Jamie getting up out of bed with the radio and the stirring of the coffee, drawing the audience into a sense of relaxation and it being a calm, fresh new morning getting ready for work. On top of this, Jamie's costume was casual pyjamas presenting to the audience that nothing is wrong, despite the scene the audience have just witnessed prior to this scene. This aids in helping the audience understand that this scene (in the morning) is before that of the interrogation - strengthening the continuity along with the time of day being shown. We, as a group, decided to keep Jamie in his pyjamas, instead of him getting changed into his business clothes, to effectively challenge the thriller conventions by contrasting the atmosphere that our target audience, teenagers and young adults, have just had in the first and previous scene and would expect to carry on - setting the plot up for a bigger twist and climax which evidently is the main ingredient that makes an interesting film.

Above: Picture of Jamie in his pyjamas coming
down in the morning seeing Ellie

Another convention that we looked at was the location of our thriller. The conventional thriller location is that of remote, desolate places such as a foreign cities, deserts or polar regions. I wanted to keep this, however, having a huge contrast between the first scene and the second in terms of atmosphere. For our first location, we needed a dark room to carry out an interrogation on Jamie. We decided on Thomas Rivet's house (his bedroom) to be our first location as we needed it to look dark but represent it being the house of the hostage takers. This could all be done by the dark curtains blocking out any outside light and there was a desk and shelves to help symbolise it being a house and therefore the hostage takers not being professionals - otherwise they would use the typical warehouse or dockyard

Above: Picture of the

interrogation room

Our second location was in the kitchen of Thomas Rivet's house. This ties in with keeping the convention of having the two ordinary characters who do not get into trouble as the kitchen represents a first-time buyers house and is relatively small allowing the use of the proxemics to help the audience get the sense of the two characters being very close.

Above: Picture of the kitchen

 

Secondly, we then looked at conventions of continuity and the language of film. Like all types of media, they all communicate in one way or another and this is no different for film. The opening scene of a film generally answers questions such as 'Who?', however, we decided to begin the film straight into an interrogation scene to upset this balance and to increase the suspense and tension from the outset. I feel we used language brilliantly as the absence of the answer of 'Who', 'Where?' and 'Why?' created this atmosphere that we wanted. I made sure that there was not an eyeline shot on the hostage takers so to not reveal too much of their characters, effectively wanting the audience to not feel they know the hostage takers well, hense why you only see the hostage takers from low angle shots or from other angles except eyeline shots.

The only danger with film language for a thriller film such as ours, was that we did not want to reveal too much to the audience or have the interrogation scene too long as this would risk losing the ambiance and feel of this particular dramatic scene and the thriller. However, I do not feel that this happened and it has been my responsibility to check that this did not happen through me carrying out the editing. Through the use of our planning, filming and finally editing, I feel we succeeded in this and used the conventions of language to convey the right message across to the audience.

Overall, I am confident that we used conventions well as they were meant to create a shocking, medium-paced interrogation with the contrast of the calm, tranquil and normal second scene. The language of the film is one of the most important aspects and Thomas, Harry and I feel this has been achieved.

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Preliminary Task

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

As you have read in one of my previous blogs, we also have done our preliminary task which was called 'The USB'. To briefly remind us and summarise this, we had to use three types of shot to show our initial skills. The three types of shots that we had to include were: Match on Action, Shot Reverse Shot and finally the 180 Degree Rule Shot. Looking back on this task, I feel that I have learnt a lot between making this and our recent two minute opening sequence. I have learnt more about genre conventions and so have been able to apply that to my opening sequence as well as I have learnt in more detail of how best to edit films which is definitly a skill that is worth knowing. In the preliminary task, we made a couple of errors and one being time management as we could have completed the preliminary task far quicker if we had, had a shot list. We have learnt from that mistake and this time we made sure to we got the planning done as quick as possible so we could in turn start filming and editing a long time before the official deadline.

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Evaluation of the whole production: Undisclosed Desires! Part 3

Professional Practise

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

Thinking about what kind of media institution might distribute our film, I believe that a media institution such as 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment would distribute our movie within the UK. I think this as it has distributed other thriller films such as:

• Silent Hill
• 28 Days Later
• Adrift
• Silence of the Lambs

As 20th Century Fox has distributed other films in the same genre, I believe our film is of a similar quality to Silent Hill and so therefore I feel 20th Century Fox would be the right media institution for our film. As well as being around the same quality, I think that our film would receive around the same ratings and popularity amongst the teen market as what Silent Hill received when it was first released.

The deadline that we had to keep to was the 15th May 2010 and we thought that we had plenty enough time and we haven been proven right, however, the last week leading up to the deadline has gone very quickly so has been tight to do the last finishing touches. The process of film-making takes a long time and the main problem came down to setting a date when we all were free to start filming and this did not just depend on our group, we also had to consult Thomas' sister, Agnes Rivet. We had to consult her as we needed an extra person on hand to act as our group only consists of three of us when we needed four actors, luckily we found and cast Agnes easily and she was very willing to help and I say thank you to her!

On the subject of deadlines, we set ourselves our own deadlines or targets. The reason why we did this was to help make us constantly aware of time and that we needed to get the filming out the way so I could start on the editing process which I will be explaining about later in this blog. The first date we set was when to start filming and this was set on the 20th April 2010. Then we set a deadline for when we needed to be finished by and subsequently this was set for 12th May 2010.

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Equipment
When making our film, we needed a number of different types of equipment from the camera to props to even resources such as our script. Here is a short list of things that we needed to have on set to film:

• Camera
• Storyboard
• Script
• A chair
• Desk Lamp (Lighting and atmospheric effects)
• Fake Blood
• Hockey Stick (Background mise-en-scene)
• Home-made restraints – Cable ties/string/rope/tie from suit
• Broken piece of wood from wooden desk as a weapon.
• Mobile Phone
• FM Alarm Clock
• Coffee making (Coffee, Cup, Kettle and Spoon)
• Double Bed
• Post-it note

For the camera, we were originally going to use the camera provided, but then my colleague, Thomas, suggested we should use his camera and so this made filming with ease as it was of a better quality and we could take the camera out at any point. As we were on a low budget to make this film, I came up with the perfect and cheap solution, to use a desk lamp. This was used to its best potential as it did not only give the right amount of light needed but it aided in giving the right, dramatic, atmosphere that we wanted.

Above: Picture of the room with
the desk lamp - The interrogation scene

Even though we were creating our own film, we needed a type of Health and Safety policy to abide by otherwise there may have been an unplanned visit to the hospital! We solved this problem by making sure that we knew where each other were walking and going by keeping, to a certain extent, to the storyboard. When we moved to a different location, we made sure there were no hazards or obstacles which could infringe Health and Safety and cause an accident while filming, for instance if a breakfast bowl was left on the side of the kitchen worktop where I would be making the coffee during the film.

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Human Resources

For our film to go right, we needed to organise ourselves so that each of us had a role to play and with me currently studying drama, seemed only quite fitting I should do some acting. To decide our roles, one of the first things we did during the research process was that we discussed it. During this we decided who would be best at a certain role. The roles that I came out with were: Chief Editor, Actor, Assistant Script Writer and Props. These suited me very well especially editing as I had already had experience from the preliminary task and despite the initial problems I encounted during that; I enjoyed it and the satisfaction of overcoming the challenges that I met.

I decided for my role in the props, that we should use as little as possible because not many of us had a lot of money and therefore we did not want to spend a huge amount. The main props that we needed were the likes of the fake blood, coffee making facilities such as a kettle and cup, and a chair. This came as a relief as it meant we saved money as well as I believe by not having many props; the audience would focus more on the action; hense there were no big props used. We particularly needed less props at the start of the film as otherwise the audience potentially could become confused if they are unable to focus on the events unfolding in front of them and consequently would not find it thrilling.

We managed to choose the location by first identifying the conventions of location for a thriller which as described earlier in part 1, is that thriller tend to be located in desolute, dark and remote places such as an abandoned city or out at sea. Once we had identified these conventions, we then put our minds to work to think of an area which we knew would be a perfect, dark setting to film the first scene of the interrogation. Then we would be needing a happy, welcoming home for the second scene to contrast the first scene as well as to represent the young couple and their lives. We needed two locations which you will have already read about in Part 1 of this post:

1. A dark, isolated room but showing its a domestic house - symbolising that the hostage takers are not professionals.
2. A warm, bright and welcoming bedroom and kitchen - representing the young, first-time buyer, couple.

Another aspect that we had to manage as well as the location and the props, relates to the mise-en-scene - costumes. We had to pick the right costumes to aid in the representation that we wanted to put across in the film to help the audience understand Who, What, Where, When and Why while understanding the messages that we wanted to present. (As told earlier in this post). I decided on the costumes, which I created a post a couple weeks ago about, by keeping all the characters in casual clothes (Jeans, t-shirt etc.) but with the exception of Jamie who has to wear a white shirt at the beginning of scene one to show that he has come from work and that it is later on in the day than scene two - helping the audience understand the shift of time of going back earlier in the day, before the interrogation, for scene two.

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To professionally shoot a film, we needed to create a storyboard to interpret what each of us were thinking and how we wanted to portray the story from paper to the screen. We drew what we thought should be the next scene and then wrote captions and annotated them to make it clearer. I attempted at drawing but failed and so I handed the whole job over to my colleague, Thomas who did this very well with only Harry and I helping out with the captions and annotations. In practise, the storyboard gave us a basic outline of the film and what type of scene we wanted to produce. Besides this, it was only a basic outline as when it came down to filming, one of us came up with a better idea of how to shoot a particular scene or even to shoot an entirely new scene for the film.

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Evaluation of my own film production - 'The USB'

I have created this preliminary film in which I started off with a basic outline of what I had to include in my production. I took that away thinking of ways to tackle this project and over two days, I had expanded on the basic outline that my group was given and have now come out with a short film called 'The USB'.

The basic outline of our film was that it had to include a 'Match on Action' shot, a 'Shot Reverse Shot' and follow the '180 Degree Rule'. Once we had read through the basic requirements of our film, we watched a short introduction to our preliminary task and this helped our understanding further so we could take the task in hand and produce a film to the best of our ability.

We started off with the first rule in film-making, creating a storyboard and sharing each others ideas in the group about how to tackle this task. I believe we did this very successfully as we all listened and contributed within our group of three and gradually built a storyboard in which took in all of our ideas and put them on to paper, therefore giving us the plan that was later to be filmed.

The next step was to cast out roles in the group and then set out to work on our production of 'The USB'. We set off to the area in which we had appropriately chosen to film and then referred to our storyboard to start filming. During this process of filming the scenes, we referred to the storyboard as well as coming up with better ideas of how to film a certain scene at that point in time and this helped enhance the film overall.

While filming over two days, we did encounter a couple of problems which we had to over come. One of the problems was that on the second day, one of the actors wore different clothes to what they wore first time round, so we had to retake those scenes, but we over came this problem by retaking the scenes that included this actor which luckily enough was only one scene.

Another problem we had was when we were trying to take an overhead shot. We had to work out the best way of stabilising the camera and taking the shot from the height of the door. We over came this by two of us organising ourselves so that we could stabilise the camera and take this shot.

Once we had completed the necessary filming, we went onto the final process of editing. We cut sections that we didn't need and fitted scenes together with transitions and text when needed, for instance, letting the audience know the characters names. Then finally we added the credits and had finished editing our film.

In conclusion, I believe that our film went very well and we not only learnt a great deal about filming and editing, but we also learnt how to contribute ideas effectively and learnt other skills that would be required of us when doing our coursework and making our two minute film.