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 2

Constructing 'the real'

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I believe our media product, 'Undisclosed Desires', represents a particular social group of people who watch a film for that rush of adrenaline which would be Thriller fans especially. It represents this social group as our opening sequence contains many thriller conventions and thrills such as when the male character scares his partner or when the deranged man creeps up to the man, this is what fuels that adrenaline that people like out of a thriller.

I feel from our film and opening sequence, it represents young couples, however, in particular people with psychological problems in terms of the hostage takers. One of the main psychological problems is a type of Erotomania in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger, is in love with him or her. Our film, partly from the opening sequence, shows how victims of Erotomania can be affected along with their loved ones. In our opening sequence, not a lot of this is represented as it comes on further in the film but Rose wants Jamie to call Ellie (his girlfriend) in the interrogation scene as Vinnie is in love with her and believes she will choose him over Jamie. This is only partly represented in the opening sequence as it is meant to be a quick and dramatic scene, however later on in the film the interrogation scene is seen again but in it's whole entirety - showing, clearly, Vinnie and Rose's psychological problems.

The whole film conveys this underlying message of how victims of people with psychological problems, in particular Erotomania, are affected. It shows that even though his life is good in the fact that Jamie is living with his girlfriend, it can turn around suddenly if his not careful as no-one is invincible and this is portrayed by Jamie following clues later on and ending up in the hands of the psycho hostage takers. This then leads onto the next message that you should always tell someone where you are going - however this shall be explained slightly later on in the evaluation as by then it will make more sense.

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In terms of realism, our film challenges the sense of belief as the idea of two people with psychological problems being together and helping each other get what they want is fairly unlikely. On the other hand, this is what makes a thriller a thriller as it is meant to contain an element of disbelief and so therefore our film may not necessarily be truely realistic but I believe it works superbly!

Overall, the camera work, mise-en-scène, acting, dialogue, music and all the other elements that make up a film, played a big role in the construction of verisimilitude. This means that all the aspects of film all contributed to the realism aspect and atmosphere of the film and this is exactly what we, Thomas and I, the directors, wanted to achieve. We wanted to achieve this to aid the representation of how victims of people with psychological problems can be affected and this could not be done with a certain amount of realism. This is what I believe we have achieved.

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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 the whole production: Undisclosed Desires! Part 4

Making Meaning

What would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience?

For our opening sequence our initial target audience was teenagers, young people and any thriller lovers out there who want to see our film. Now that we have made our opening sequence, I can now say that I believe our film would attract all those groups of people above as well as any action fans out there in the world as our film is a hybrid; part of the thriller/action genre. The way we attract our audience in the first two minute opening sequence is, I believe, mainly down to the sound, pace of the scene and the camera work. 

The camera work is particularly significant to the thriller/action genre as it can focus on certain characters, objects or even actions which the Director decides to emphasise on to the audience. The Director would emphasis on a particular aspect to make sure the audience are aware of the significance of it or to add a deeper meaning - for instance love. An example of when the camera focuses on a certain object is the stirring of the coffee - this not only parallels with the end of the film (full film), it also helps represent peace and tranquility which contrasts what has just been witnessed in the scene before. However, there are also times when the camera will focus on a certain object to purely give enough time for the audience to read and take something in, such as the threat placed upon the picture frame of Ellie and her best friend - indicating that it is a threat on Ellie's life if Jamie does not cooperate.

There was also the special effects which I, the editor, have used to enhance the film at the most appropriate moments. As well as using transitions to evoke the sense of a lapse of time between shots, I have added sound effects such as the 'ticking clock' when the titles appear to help release the tension and suspense from the previous scene as well as to show time has gone by (in this case backwards) and act as a sound bridge into the morning and the alarm clock going off. I have also brighten one particular morning scene as when it was shot, there must have a been a very slight change in the outside light and consequently this could be noticed on screen. However, with the advantages of using iMovie HD, I have been able to increase the contrast and brightness of the scene to keep the continuity right throughout scene two and the whole film.

Both of these examples, camera work and special effects, both contribute to how we ensured that the meaning would be apparent to the audience. It did this by showing one of its main elements we wanted to portray, suspense and tension but juxta-posed by the idyllic and relaxed morning. The length of the shots were short for the first scene of the interrogation to make it fast-paced adding to the tension while I made sure in the editing process that the length between shots for scene two in the morning would be longer and consequently contributing to reducing the tension and demostrating the happy and calm life that Jamie and Ellie live. On top of this, the message or moral that the audience would recieve would be further on in the film but would show how you should not go off somewhere (in this case, follow the clues left by the stalker (Rose) ) without telling anyone but thinking you know best; so believing you can do it all by yourself - it would be giving the message that it is not cowardly if you ask for help.

When we were given our initial brief, within the first five minutes of getting together in groups, we had decided we wanted to produce a thriller. This in mind, we decided our target audience for our film should be young and so I perceived this to be around the 15 - 20 year old bracket. We also handed out questionnaires to research into our target audience and whether we had mis-calculated which generations would watch our thriller. We found out from our questionnaires that we were right but we needed to expand our age bracket as there were a couple of people who were in their late thirty's who said they liked to watch thrillers, however, not necessarily thriller/horror genre though. 

After the initial brief and thought process, we then moved onto looking at the research that we had already conducted when watching opening sequences of films. One of the films that I have mentioned already in one of my previous blogs that we looked at was Memento. We took from this, regarding our creative process, the way that the film started off in the future or at the end of the film. This gave the idea that instead of a normal, straight-forward storyline, we could switch between present and past; this is what we ended up going through with from pre-production to our finished product.

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During the entire production process of our opening sequence, we made one or two creative decisions based on our target audience. One such time when we made a creative decision was when I had written the script. When rehearing the script through with Agnes, Thomas and Abbey, we all recognised that we could change the language to more of a 'heated and tense' conversation in the interrogation scene in relation to our target audience, young to middle age people. However, when it came to the editing stage - I realised, along with Thomas,  that the scene was far more dramatic with only the key lines such as ". . .call" . . "Ellie" with non-diegetic sound over the top that we created through Garageband. Secondly, we wanted to be creative in the language and add certain words in as we did not want to use simple, basic words when there are adults watching our film expecting the interrogation scene to take advantage of using didactic language. Therefore, we changed the language to represent the characters personality as well as their age, despite deciding in the end that it was far more dramatic through visual than aural.

In filming, we took the decision to keep to the storyboard most of the time as we had thought about our target audience through out the storyline and storyboarding process. Nevertheless, as just mentioned above, the storyboard does not necessarily represent all the opening sequence due to the decision made in the editing process of using only the key lines as well as the film was 4:30mins long so we had to cut 2:30mins out because it can only be two minutes. I have watched the opening sequence many times over (to the point where you know every mini second off by heart!) and have made sure that the interpretations that we wanted to get across are fulfilled and are not overshadowed by any other possibly interpretations and more importantly fits in with our target audience. In the end, we wanted to check on the interpretations given out as all three of us want our film and opening sequence to appeal to many groups of people and specifically our target audience.

The next step in discovering the audience's reaction to our idea and eventually the opening sequence was once we had finished. We decided to show a few people the opening sequence so they could assess, examine and evaluate it. This helped us a lot as the critic reports allowed for people to make any criticisms of the opening sequence so we could take this on board and alter it if possible. This would give us even more of a reason to improve it if needed, but luckily we have not received any criticisms of our film.

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Evaluation of the whole production: Undisclosed Desires! Part 5

Creative Tools

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

During the production of my opening sequence and my course, I have learnt a number of different technological skills which may surprise you!

The Digital Camera that we used was Thomas' and  it was thanks to my colleague that we managed to gain a better quality camera. The camera performed better than expected and had many features such as special effects. Unfortunatly, I was not the cameraman and so therefore I did not offically use the camera; but Harry told me that it worked superbly and it was a pleasure to use.

The lighting that we used could be described as 'primitive' in relation to the film industry. This is because we mainly used the ordinary sunlight and a torch which only shines a direct beam of light. This proved difficult to use, however, I do feel that we overcame the disadvantages of this method and succeeded very well. In contrast to this, we then used a fully functional and up-to-date piece of software called Imovies HD.

The main skill that I developed was without a doubt; editing. I had never edited a film before so therefore had never used any software remotely similar to Imovies HD. Particularly during the production of our opening sequence, I learnt how to cut and split scenes, add in transitions, include sound effects (SFX) and video effects (VFX) as well as using the iMac microphone. This in particular was used on a couple of occasions and I was amazed at how well it picked up sound through the sheer quality and sensitivity of it. Remarkable!

The one downside to Imovies HD though is that when ever I included a transition, it 9 times out of 10, kept the previous, old diegetic sound which we did not want. This was frustrating as I felt it not only infringed on our final product, but it also prevented my creative flow as if this did not happen then the potentially for my imagination and the movie would have been unlimited. Despite this problem though, I enjoyed the challenge and overcame it by reducing gradually decreasing the sound leading up to it.

Nevertheless, Imovies HD is an exceedingly good program to use when it comes down to professionally editing a film. I feel that this piece of software would have been closer to the film industry than any other pieces of technology that I used as it worked very well and had all the tools you needed despite the one flaw that I came across. This now concludes my evaluation.

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The whole experience was brilliant and I feel that I have learnt a lot during this time, and learnt many new skills. Thank you for reading my blog about my course over the previous months and I hope you have enjoyed reading all about this course with me just as much as I have enjoyed writing it!

Many Thanks

SnazyMedia

The Editor's Edition - Uncut!

I've now officially finished editing our two minute opening sequence, 'Undisclosed Desires', and what a jouney it has been!
I had the responsibility of editing our opening sequence and I believe overall it has gone well. I used the program, imovies HD, which is an apple software on the iMac's and I found it was completely different to Windows Movie Maker. The sheer professionalism of imovies HD grabbed me by surprise as I had used it during our preliminary task but had not taken in the full scale of the program; this time I could.
I found that when using imovies HD, I noticed it had many different features and tools such as:

• Sound Effects (SFX)
• Video Effects (VFX)
• Transitions
• Sound Volume/Pitch settings
• Movie Timeline
• Microphone capability

All these play a key role in making a film as you need to use transitions between shots to keep the film flowing and then the likes of the movie timeline helps you to quickly navigate through your own film with no hassle. This is perfect piece of software that once you know how to get to grips with it; its easy and enjoyable to work with. However, there was one problem that I encounted when first trying to edit - the iMac's that are in place had been updated and iMovies HD had disappeared and was no-where to be seen! We contacted our media course teacher and she seemed puzzled by this too but luckily enough she had a iBook G4 that we could use which had iMovies HD installed on the Operating system (OS) so I have used that instead without any further problems. This has taught me, that even though you have used a certain piece of software before (in this case: iMovies HD) it does not necessarily mean it will still be easy to find and use.

This now concludes the main editing side of our opening sequence and leaves me open to either enhance and add more detail to our film or do extra research which I am sure you will be seeing later on my blog.