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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