Final Film

Here is our final AS video. I tried to re-order a lot of the film to ensure it looked less like a trailer and more like an opening. Personally, I feel have progressed a lot within the practical area of media studies and am really pleased with our final result.

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

Here is my post with my preliminary task on it.

I think that I have improved a lot in both the filming and editing sides of production. As shown below, in the preliminary task, some of my shots could have been framed better, in this shot of Gemma, I have accidently cut out her feet, whereas in my film, all of the shots were planned so the framing emphasizes what's happening in the scene. In the screen shot below Emily and Jay have been placed in similar positions in their frames to show they're of a similar status and to reflect their similar positions, the audience cannot yet tell who has the power / who is the antagonist. Also, the lack of a tripod in my preliminary task made the shots looked unprofessional and rushed as they were a little shakey, in my main piece, I always used a tripod to ensure the opening looked controlled and of a high quality.

In my preliminary task, editing was minimal and simplistic, with basic cuts and transitions. However, I progressed on to using various ways of cutting to create atmosphere and tension (for example, jump cuts) as well as using transitions to suit the music. The preliminary task didn't include anything too complicated, but in the film I tried to use techniques such a split screen and colour correction, allowing my knowledge of final cut to grow. Having said this, I did use the idea of layering images right from the start of the preliminary task, however, in my final film the transition in and out of the layered image is a lot more subtle and looks more professional.

I had a better awareness for more of the micro-elements in the main task. Things such as mise-en-scène, cinematography and non-diagatic sound were thought about in a lot of detail, whereas in my preliminary task there were certain areas which needed a lot of work (lighting mainly, most of the shots were too dark). In my opening sequence, I think all of my shots are well lit, showing a progression in both planning, and in actual filming ability. The shots below are taken from the two tasks, it's clear to see the progression made in terms of lighting, camera angles, and also in location - in my final film the locations were really scenic and well chosen, and in my preliminary task I just used the school.

I feel that I have progressed a lot over the course, at the beginning I was barely able to open a file on final cut express and had never filmed anything before, now I can use a wide variety of editing techniques and shot styles to create a professional looking opening sequence which fits the codes and conventions of my hybrid genre.

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

One of the main things I've learnt about is the technology avaliable to help create a smooth, intricate piece of media.

Above is a screen grab of both Final Cut and also the toolbar, which contained the pen tool for editing the music and how it faded, along with various other things including the tool for cropping shots.

I learnt how to use the editing programme Final Cut effectively. I am now able to add music to my clips, and then cut the music to fit perfectly with the action in the film, as well as how to use the pen tool to fade the sound in and out appropriately, this is located on the toolbar above. I can now add, order and cut clips to get the pefect combination of shots, and learnt how to use various transitions, such as cross dissolve. Now I know how to place effects onto a specified clip, for example, monotones and grayscales, and I can also use the colour correction feature like in the walking home and killing scenes.

For my titles, I used font animation programme LiveType, which really added another dimension to my film because it incorporated the titles well and made them more aesthetic, capturing the audience's attention from the start. 

However, in my opinion, the best thing I learnt was how to split screen two or more clips together using the V1 and 2 chanels on Final Cut. It helped me to achieve the final outcome of the film - and is undoubtably a very useful tool for future projects.

5) How did you attract your audience?

I tried to attract my target audience in a variety of ways. Firstly, as mentioned in the previous post, I tried to use protagonists similar in age to my preferred audience, ensuring that the film is easier to relate to, and therefore more enjoyable to watch.

I built tension and suspense through the many jump cuts, which as well as adding fear, imply that the film is fast paced and full of action. By placing these cuts after the very beginning, where I used more lengthy transitions such as cross dissolve, it breaks the audience's preconceptions about the pace and genre of the film - which should attract them to the remainder of it. Also, I feel the non-linear storyline helps to attract the audience because they'll want to know how it got to the point of  murder. However, looking back I realise this was quite ambitious because my film could be seen as a trailer, not an opening.

The genre of my film should attract teenagers, who are statistically the largest demographic to watch horrors. However, I wanted to target both genders, so by using one male and one female protagonist, and by adding elements of the romance genre I feel that my film could appeal to both sexes. To reflect my chosen genre, and to keep the audience's attention I placed the killing scene at the end of the opening, using a stereotypical prop and a dimly lit area to denote action, violence and death. Depsite this, I now see how this could enforce the fact that it appears quite trailerish due to the sudden cut to the title and halt in music, next time I would place it at the beginning to try and make it seem more obviously an opening.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think that my film would mainly be for teenage culture and young adults for the reasons stated in my original target audience post.

Personally, I'd rate my film as a 15 because, after going onto the BBFC's website, http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ and reading the criterion for a 15 film I discovered the two following statements:

1. (In a 15) strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised. My film doesn't contain any sadisitc violence or horror, yet I would imagine it to contain strong threats throughout. 

2.  Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorised. Although my film features a stabbing scene using a kitchen knife, I made sure it was done fairly subtley and in a way which doesn't condone the seriousness of using such weapons.

Also, I researched the gender of teenagers who watched horror films and although it's predominantly male, I feel that my film could also appeal to teenage girls because of the romantic underlying storyline and the female protagnoist, allowing the girls to relate more. The younger cast I've chosen to use permits the teenage audience to identify with the characters more, this has been done in many recent horror films such as the popular Final Destination series and lesser known films for example The Human Centipiede, which has become a teenage cult phenomenon.

I looked at other psychological horror films which are globally known such as The Sixth Sense and The Gift - both have been rated as 15's by the BBFC, and because my film contains similar themes to them, I have rated it the same.

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

The best way of getting our film to make the highest possible profit would be to go to a major distributer such as Warner Bros who produced The Exorcist, A Nightmare on Elm Street and House of wax. People are more likely to buy from a well known film production company as they're seen to be more reliable and get more publicity.

I could also go to smaller companies like 'Hammer Productions', who produced the Frankenstein, and Dracula films, as well as many psychological horror films. They would be useful because they're specialised so will have a better idea of how to market the film to the target audience.

Another way I could distribute my film is through video sharing websites such as youtube or metacafe, which has a whole section for films, making my movie easily and freely accessible to a wider audience for quick feedback. These sorts of video sharing websites are exceedingly popular especially with my target audience and so putting a few clips or a trailer of my film onto them would increase it's popularity. There are also lots of well known websites made specifically for watching films and videos on, for example megavideo or imdb (internet movie database), which would be good for gaining publicity.

Finally, television channels like Sky could distribute my film on Sky Horror, Sky Movies or on the horror film channel , number 319, this would then make my film more widely avaliable to people because they wouldn't have to pay to go to the cinema and so it would widen my potential audience.

2) How does your media products represent particular social groups?

Emily mainly conforms to the sterotypical female in horror films. She is young, attractive and potrayed as being quite weak and easily lead. Her being lured by Jay is particularly obvious in the walking home scene where they're holding hands, this is after she's had the vision of him chasing her, connoting that women aren't as self-reliant as men and are more easily taken advantage of - a sterotypical view of women as the 'damsel in distress'. However, in some horror films, halloween, the female characters are quite promiscuous, in my film Emily is the picture of innocence so, you could say she is a countertype,pictured are the two outfits we see her in, she wears the shorts and jumper and is holding her dress, however, her lack of promiscuosity could make her a stereotype because it implies she's the naieve victim.

Jay's character is a countertype of the traditional anatagonist of horror movies. Firstly, he is in no way disfigured and on the surface looks relatively like a normal, teenage male. He doesn't own anything dark coloured, nor does he appear menacing. We first see him being a stereotypical teenage boy (taken from the influence of the romance genre), and he comes across as gentlemanly and sweet, another countertype to the normal antagonists of horror films (Freddy Krugar - A Nightmare On Elm Street). Male characters in my film are portryed as mysterious and as having an ambiguous personailty, we do not know whether or not we trust him or if he's a good or bad character until the end of the opening (however elements of mystery are shown in the shot of his eyes, below). They are also seen as dominant over the females, which is a common convention of many horror films.

My film is also countertypical due to the fact that I have a female protagonist. I showed this by giving her more screen time and also by giving her a supernatural trait, the vision, and so an upper-hand over the male. This connotes that although men are physically stronger, women play a more important role within society and are more knowledgeable. It is uncommon for horrors to have female protagonists because of the ideology that they're too weak to defend themselves. My film defies this by presenting a lead female who seems a lot more capable (until the last shot of the stabbing) than the male lead, I have shown this in the last spilt screen of the getting ready shots, Emily is calming putting on mascara whereas Jay is sitting on his bed nervously playing with his hair (a role-reversal of the typical male/female stereotypes - women are usually portrayed as nervous wrecks and men are presented as calmer), the screenshot of this is below.

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

I chose to do a predominantly horror based film for my two-minute opening. A horror is one which deals primarily with human fears: nightmares, vunerability, the unknown and death. My film plays with the idea of death and having someone you love turn against you, so in that respect it's fairly conventional. However, I decided to create an unusual hybrid genre of horror/romance and so to mix in conventions of a romantic film I added an underlying storyline of the characters falling in love yet having something preventing their happiness, and, unlike most romance films, they do not have the fairytale ending convention.

The typical themes in a horror are: superstition and possession (the exorcist); a fight between good and evil (this could also be in a religious sense); the apocalypse (Dawn of the Dead); common fears; killing and servere injuries. Within my opening I look at common fears, as well as the idea of betrayal and murder. I chose not to look at the religious side of horror films because personally, I am more interested in human insanity, although I did include elements of the supernatural by making her physic.

The titles within a horror film normally go one of two ways: they're either really overly creepy or completely ambiguous as to which genre they belong to (like in the fourth kind). I felt by having an implacable font it added to the tension and made the stabbing shot more dramatic because it wasn't expected. As for structure, I feel my film is quite unique. I chose to use a non-linear storyline (more notably a convention of the thriller genre).

I think my film is quite similar to Psycho: 1960 because it looks at the horror behind psychopathy and insanity, I looked at the idea of the 'monster within the human' (like in Psycho), however, unlike most horror films, I haven't included any prominant binary oppositions. This is because I wanted to make the antagonist's (Jay's character) evil side more shocking and unpredictable.

Looking at iconography, a horror film normally uses: haunted houses, disfigured faces, screaming victims, a phallic murder wepon and darkened places. I used a dagger as a phallic wepon, one of our shots shows Jay in a dimly lit plac holding the knife high, connoting masculinity and power. I have included this shot below (knife circled):

However, I subvert some of the ideas, within my opening there aren't any screaming girls, in fact the whole beginning contains no diagetic sound, I feel this adds to the eerie atmosphere. I also break the sterotype because instead of a haunted house, the only houses you see are from the romantic side of the film (the date and when they're getting ready).

Preliminary Task

At the beginning of the course, before starting our main film openings, we had to make a 30 second clip of a character opening a door, sitting down, having a conversation and then leaving. We were given specific things
to include in our task: an example of match on action, the 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot.

Della and I also used some of the editing techniques that we were thinking of using in our film, mainly overlaying shots and the cross fade transition. Doing our preliminary task allowed us to get used to the editing software, and also working with a camera.

 

3rd Edit Finished

We finished our 3rd edit of the film opening, it is very similar to the 2nd, except that we altered the vision scene to look like the above image. We layered the two shots together because Della and I both felt that it looks more surreal and the audience will be able to recognise that it's a vision more easily.
We also altered the sequence in which the vision scene happens. We start with the extreame close up of Jay's eyes, then move to the vision, then back to Jay's eyes and finishing with the close up of Emily looking secretive. We feel that this ties the scene together nicely, and by placing the same shot of Jay's eyes either side of the vision it brings the audience "back to reality" and emphasizes the fact that the scene wasn't reality.

We have encountered one slight problem though; the colouring on the walking home scene and the stabbing scene looked different on final cut than on youtube, they are a lot darker and the colours don't look exactly right. To solve this, all we need to do is simply adjust the colour settings on both of these clips, which won't take long at all. Here is a still from the walking home scene:

We still want it to look dark and mysterious, however, this may be slightly too dark.

Other than that, I think we're finished.

2nd Edit Finished

 

We added the above titles (the name's of the actors) to our film. We decided not to use the font animation tool LiveType for these because they are on during when the film plays and we both felt that to have animated and moving titles on whilst this is happening would detract from the action of the film.

The font that we chose is from font website http://www.dafont.com/, which is a free font download website that we used for our animated titles as well. The font we selected doesn't really belong to a particular genre, however, I personally feel that it has a sense of thrillier / horror film about it due to the typewritten styling of it.

Another thing we did was re-order our clips to the order I mentioned in the post about our first edit. I think this has been effective because it has made our film opening easier to understand and also gives it a sense of time sequencing.

Next edit we are working on the vision scene, (1.16 - 1.26), because we think by laying the shot of Emily's face over her running it will show the contrast between vision and reality. Also, we may edit the order in which the extreame close ups of Emily's face and Jay's eyes come on to make the scene flow better.



Transitions

To make the transitions between our clips look less harsh Della and I chose to use the transitional tools on Final Cut to link clips together. We used 'Cross Fade' a lot because we felt it made the getting ready scenes more smooth, creating an atmosphere of relaxation.

However, to contrast the smooth editing predominantly used in the film, for the running scene at 1.46 in the second edit we chopped pieces out of the original clip to make it have a more stacato and jumpy beat. This dramatizes the clip and also fits well with the music.

Final Titles

As I said in the previous post, we have constructed our titles using animation programme 'Livetype'.
We have the following titles:

HMG Productions
A Helwig and Daniels Film
Emily Smith
Jay Khatri
Directed by Della Helwig and Becky Daniels
Foretold

All of these will be made on Livetype, except 'Emily Smith' and 'Jay Khatri' because we want them to fade in onto the black part of the final split screen. Emily's on the top and appearing first, Jay's second at the bottom. This is because it connotes that it is Emily's story and she is the main focus.

1st Edit Finished

Last week, myself and Della finished our initial edit of our film. We are both execptionally pleased with the outcome of the shots and also our titles, which we created on 'Livetype', a programme for font animation, to add a dynamic effect to our title sequences. Below is a screenshot of our font and graphic title.

We managed to make the two very contrasting styles of music fit together and sound very dramatic, emphasing the action within the film. We achieved this by using the pen tool to merge the music together, making it less jolty to listen to.

We asked our teacher for feedback regarding our first edit and he seemed happy with it - however, he did mention that it was quite difficult to understand when the clips were happening. To fix this we have re-ordered our clips in the following order : dress scence, dinner scene, walking home, running, killing, final title. This will hopefully allow the audience to better understand the time frame we are working on.

Final Music

Della and I have spent a lot of time thinking about and discussing the micro-element of music this week and we have chosen the following songs:

Getting ready scenes
Primavera : Ludovico Einaudi.
The soft yet strangely haunting melody creates a sense of relaxation whilst still being quite suspensful, eerie and re-enforcing the horror genre. The music is quite long, however it will be fairly easy to cut as it's quite repetitive.

Dinner date scene
Crane Dance : Ludovico Einaudi.
Chosen for the same reasons as 'Primavera'. We really liked the way it was both creepy and romantic, like our hybrid genre of horror/romance. This scene will hopefully have the monolouge over the top, adding a nostalgic dimension.

Running and Killing scenes
Chase Jill and Fifty Cal : Charlie Clouser (Saw 3D soundtrack)
We decided to go for music from a very conventional horror film as it has strong beats and sounds in it. There is also a crescendo that we can use for the stabbing scenes. I like the beat of "Chase Jill" for the running as it really implies the danger of the situation.

Editing

Della and I have begun the editing process. We have learnt many different things, for example, cropping, cutting, transitions, split screens and effects. However, because our video files are all .MOV it is taking longer than we planned to put the opening together, because every time we move a clip in the timeline we have to render it again. Despite this, we are making good progress and I am pleased with how the film looks so far.

3rd (and final) filming session.

On Friday night, Della, Myself, Jay and Emily went to Della's to finish off filming for our opening. Della and I both think that the session went really well, we managed to get everything we need to begin the editing process and we're very happy so far. Below is one of our faveourite shots from the session; we think the lighting and the silhouettes of the two people add a cute, romantic feel. However, we are staying within the cinematography conventions of a horror film due to the dim lighting throughout the shot.

2nd Filming Session

On Saturday, Della filmed Emily's running scenes so we could look at and start elimintating some of the unecessary ones today. The lighting and depth of focus on all the shots was really nice, and I think we have a good potential film opening so far. Now all that's left to do is film Jay, which we are doing on Friday evening; we would do it earlier, however, all of us have other commitments such as paid work.

Research : Editing (Citizen Kane - 1914)

Today I decided to look up the editing used in 1941 horror 'Citizen Kane' produced by Orson Wells. It is "an acknowledged milestone in the development of cinematic technique" - http://www.filmsite.org/bestfilmediting3.html

It used many techniques that Della and I are looking at (flash-forwards and a non-linear storyline). It also uses a lot of transitions for example dissolve or curtain wipes as well as both long, extended shots juxtaposed with short, sharp shots to build tension (like what we're intending on doing with the date scene and the short shots of the forest running scenes).

Change of Plan

Last week and this week Della and I had planned to finish all our filming. However, due to a series of illnesses (Emily last week and Della this week), it became impossible to do so.
So, I spoke to Della and we agreed to try filming Jay's getting ready scene and the dinner date on Saturday 8th January in the evening - I asked Jay and Emily at school to make sure they are both free for this.

This week I have finished editing the preliminary task we did a while back and I have been learning how to use the editing software (final cut pro) which we are using to edit our film.

First Filming Session

On Thursday Della filmed Emily's getting ready scene and it went really well. They shot a lot of footage and got the shots we need; although Della and I will need to go through them and decide which ones to use and cut during the editing process.

Final Shotlist

Here is the list of shots Della and I are going to be using for specific scenes :


Getting Ready Scenes: 
(For Jay & Emily)
Medium Close Up / Close Up - In my research I saw a mirror shot I liked, which gave us the idea to do this for a shot.
Extreme Close up - To see the outfit
Extreme Close up / Pan - Close up on eyes after make up / more getting ready
Mid Shot - Picking out clothes from wardrobe
Extreme close up - Looking through hangers

Date scene:
Long shot - Table with both actors seated.
Medium Close Up / Close Up - Each actor individually, seated at the table.
Close up - Emily's face, seeing a vision.
Medium Close Up / Close Up - Emily after vision.
Extreme Close Up - Jay's eyes.
Long shot - Extreme Long Shot - Both actors walking down street.
Close up - Holding hands.

Forest Scene:
Long shot - Emily running through forest.
Close up - Emily's Face.
Close Up - Feet running through forest.
Long shot / Pan - Emily running into distance.
Long Shot / Tracking - Emily running through forest.
Long shot / Tracking - Jay chasing Emily through forest.
Mid Shot - Emily checking around her.
Close up / Tracking - Knife about to stab Emily.

ACTOR & LOCATION SWAP

Due to the snow and everything both Alison and Will have found it difficult to film this holiday, so we've changed actors.
Our lead female role will be played by Emily Smith and lead male by Jay Khatri, both of who are very good friends to us and live in town, making it easier to arrange dates to film.
Because 3/4 members of our group now live in town, Della and I have made the joint descion that it will be easier to film the scenes in locations in Saffron Walden so it's not so much effort. We are now using the respective actor's rooms for the getting dressed scene (making it more personal) and Della's kitchen for the date scene.