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.

Title and the fonts!

I hope you have had a good easter! I sure have! Yet nevertheless, I cannot sit back and relax - I am back to work on this production as I simply want this to be the best film yet for SnazyMedia Productions.
I have decided to do my own analysis and research into fonts that can be used for our title, 'Undisclosed Desires', as I feel that the font shows what exactly the genre of the film will be and can foreshadow what is likely to happen later on in the film; therefore grabbing the audience's attention and keeping them in suspense. The main role of the font is to bring out the title of the film and to start off the atmosphere between the audience and the film which will help set the scene and genre.

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Font 1: Comic Sans MS

This font would reflect a relaxed atmospheric film which would likely be used in a drama or adventure film. It is an informal font which I believe looks good but does not fit our genre of film, Thriller, so therefore I do not believe it could be used as the title of our film.

Font 2: Arial Black

This font is a complete contrast to the one above in that it is bold, sharp and extremely eye-catching. This font would be perfect to grab the audience's attention and for an action film but I do not feel it would be suitable for our thriller as you need a font that is not only bold but also representing the 'Halt' part of the title.

Font 3: Capitals and Non-Capitals

 

This font is a unique idea which I have thought of which not only stands out from the above fonts, but would confuse the audience as it would make them wonder why some letters are capitals and some are not capitals. Analysing this font, I believe that this would look good integrated with 'Font 2' as it would be bold, sharp and confusing which one of the thriller conventions are to confuse the audience until the director decides to reveal all.

My next step now is to discuss fonts with my colleagues and collaborate our ideas until we come to a conclusion on what font we shall use for our title, 'Undisclosed Desires'

Filming - Theory done and now onto the Film

Our group decided today to start filming our two minute intro to our film as we have not only had this date scheduled but we have now completed our pre-filming theory work. Thomas has completed the props list which will act as a checklist for our group so that when we go filming we will not forget any vital props that are required such as a weapon. He has also generated the storyboard in close communcation with myself as he does Art and can draw far better out of us! Harry has finished the location analysis in which describes why we have chosen the area that we have chosen as well as it helps us visualise and interpret our ideas onto paper but in pictures and captions. Myself, I have finished the script for our actors so that they can learn their particular lines so that when it comes down to filming; they are all prepared for when the Director instructs them to act for their scene.
Today we had our first day of filming at Thomas Rivet's house and it went particularly well! Upon arrival at his house, Harry set up the camera while the rest of the crew (Thomas and Agnes Rivet and Abbey Ingram) and I went and set up props and the mise-en-scene. We decided we would film scene two of our film today as we did not have the necessary ingredients for the 'blood' that we need in scene one.

We went through a run-through of where I shall be according to the storyboard as well as deciding on whether, in reality, the storyboard camera shots fitted the narrative that we wanted to create. The scene first started off with me laying in bed 'asleep'. I wanted to capture the clock in shot to determine the time of day as this scene will come after the interrogation scene and therefore I feel it is a sub-conscious but intricate way of portraying the fact that this scene is taking place before the interrogation (7:00am).
Once this part of scene two was filmed, it then went down to the kitchen and we had a problem already: the washing machine was going. However, it sounded like the kettle which we needed so we dismissed this as a problem as it could easily fit into the narrative: A happy and settled life (in particular the kettle boiling).

Harry was the cameraman while Thomas, Agnes and I were actors. In addition to this, I directed the whole production with the assistance of Thomas. I feel today has gone very smoothly and there have been no set backs to our production schedule. It has been a tiring day of filming but has been definitely worth it!

Our next scheduled date for filming is in the next few weeks due to it being Easter and Thomas is going away on holiday to France (Its ok for some!) . Our plan is to shoot the final scene, scene one - the interrogation, as soon as Thomas gets back and we are all available. In spite of the Easter break, my group and I are still on track for our production deadline of the 15th May. Until the next post. . .Happy Easter!!

 Happy Easter!!