Candidate number

Holly Entwistle      8048

Finished Production

YESCOMPLETEDSWEETCAROLINE from Gabrielle Royle on Vimeo.

Evaluation question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

The skills that i have personally learnt from the experience of the preliminary task are mainly camera skills and improving on the shots that we previously took during the preliminary task. I noticed many of the shots we used in our preliminary production were quite shaky when put together in the production, therefore when filming shots for our final production it was my aim to try and solve this problem by mostly using a tripod and practising handheld shots to make them as smooth and fluid as possible. We also used a wider variety of shots to help create meaning & direct the audience and made sure we could edit fully and clearly for match on actions as well as using shots of shadows for dramatic effect.

Working on the preliminary task also gave me experience of working as a group and getting used to each others ways of working and different ideas inputs, this helped me in our final production because it helped me understand how each group member worked and how to work best with other people in my group.

Evaluation question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Below is the Prezi we made

A review of Pinnacle 

Evaluation 5 - Extra - Audience responses

AUDIENCE RESPONSE FINISHED from Jodie Mountain on Vimeo.

Evaluation question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

The opening to our film could relate to the film 'Ills', as they both show a mysterious crime being committed, in which we never identify who the killer actually is, and in both films, the victim is a helpless female, alone in a derelict area, who dies within the opening 5 minutes of the film. We related our film to Ills as we thought it would attract a similar audience, as both openings leave the viewer wanting to find out more and asking questions such as 'Well, where can the film go from here?' and 'Who is the killer and why has he killed them?'. When researching, we found that a lot of films use this method of starting with a disruption leaving the audience guessing, such as 'Face-Off' and 'Sixth Sense', where the disruption occurs within the opening title sequences, like our production. 

The clip below is taken from the opening of 'Face-Off' here you will see the disruption happening in the opening of the film, similar to that in ours.

Face Off Distruption from Holly Entwistle on Vimeo.

When making our production we were inspired by the title sequence in the film 'se7en', they were very jumpy and words were flashing on and off screen, ideas taken from this can be seen in our title of the film. 

Both clips are shown below…

se7en titles from Holly Entwistle on Vimeo.

Sweet Caroline Titles from Holly Entwistle on Vimeo.

  During our production, the cheery sound of 'Neil Diamond-Sweet Caroline' plays whilst two girls sit and drink in a bar. This music could be said to be contrapuntal as we have previously seen the girl in question running for her life down an abandoned rail-way track in the dead of night, and we can hear the panic in her heart beat. We used this contrapuntal music as it juxtaposes the idea of the film, and when the song starts to turn slow and sinister, it notifies the audience that something bad is going to happen. We got this idea from the film 'Face-Off', when the contrapuntal, happy music during the opening scene turns sinister when the boy is shot. We feel like this is the unique selling point of our film as the song which links in with our production's title is edited to sound dangerous and is heard in a way that it wont have previously been heard before. It also foreshadows that a happy atmosphere is about to take a turn for the worst.

Here is the point where our music changes…

Music change Sweet Caroline from Holly Entwistle on Vimeo.

Here is the point where Face-Off music changes…

Face Off Distruption from Holly Entwistle on Vimeo.

When talking about synergy in the media, it refers to the inter medial connections that can be used to promote and support films in order to give the consumer/viewer a more interactive and intergrated experience. We have used many different media resources to put together our production such as Photoshop and Pinnacle, we could go on to incorporate different media institutions such as Facebook or creating a game app to get our audience involved.

Media institutions recognise that audiences enjoy using converged technology, and want to consume media in a variety of different ways, for example: trailers, videos, jingles etc. This can be used to promote a companies film and to boost sales to create a profit. If we were wanting to promote our film, we would have to start off small scale, perhaps by creating trailers and posters. In the industry, if a film does well and creates a lot of sales, a company may wish to merchandise. This could be done by creating a game, a range of toys, or something along those lines. For example, Star Wars has created a range of computer games which has increased the films reputation. Converging media is a good technique when it comes to advertising  productions, a great way of doing this is through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Here people can interact with the film company itself and it also spreads word about the film as more and more people get involved and talk about it on the sites. Use of such websites is a great, cost effective way of advertising you film.

Evaluation question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Evaluation question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main girl character, Molly, plays a similar character to that played by Maggie Grace in the 2008 thriller 'Taken'.

Both characters/productions are similar as they both start off with a happy equilibrium event i.e. Molly is going for a night out with her friend, similarly Kim is going on holiday with the best friend. Both girls dress in respectable clothing, are around the same ago and portray happy characters all of which builds up their vulnerable persona. Both characters are naively preyed upon by a male character and unbenknown to them later are taken advantage of.

They however also have differences, a major difference is the resolution of the situations. Molly does not have anyone to save her in our production and end up being killed by the villain, however in Taken her father is trying to help her throughout and comes to her rescue at the end. Another difference between the two story lines is that Kim was not left on her own in Taken her and her friend got taken together however Molly is left on her own from the beginning which creates more tension from the audience. 

Molly fits with the stereotype of a typical damsel in distress. She is a young female character, this portrays her as weak and helpless in the eyes of the viewer. She is an easy prey. We have dressed her is respectable clothing in order to show that this situation could happen to anyone and not just those who look more provocative. Doing this also surprises the viewer and plays against their expectations.

Our male character is similar to that played by  Michael Eklund in the 2013 thriller ‘The Call’.

The characters are similar due to the fact the both have similar dress codes, they wear shabby clothing, on our case he is wearing his work clothes and in The Call he is wearing casual clothes. Both men look like they could be ordinary men however inside they are both corrupt. Both men prey on girls that fit the stereotypical vulnerable, damsel in distress stereotype in order to then kill them.

They also differ, in The Call his character preys on a number of different girls in a number of different ways such as sneaking into their house or kidnapping them in a car park however in our production the male character only has one victim and he comes across her by drugging her in a pub. They both dress in similar clothes however the colors of the clothes signify different things, we dress our character in dark clothes to represent the evil character inside however in The Call he is dressed in pale creamy colors to make him look dirty and scruffy. These colors will show when he is sweating or dirty which will revolt the viewer and add to their dislike. 

He is wearing shabby,dark clothes and is a male young man. We have created him to follow the same patterns of a stereotypical antagonistic man. We want to make it obvious that he is the villain in the film and that she should be wary. This builds the tension in the bar as the audience can predict what is going to happen before it actually happens. By dressing him in dark clothing it connotes his dark, evil character, using shabby work clothes also helps to create an  un-liked character, this is used in many films to create a revolting personality. 

Evaluation question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Here is our completed voice over commentary of our production explaining our thought process whilst producing our production.

COMPLETED COMMENTARY from Jodie Mountain on Vimeo.

Storyline

The story line is about a girl going on a night out and getting drugged by a man who is in the same pub as her, this happens in the opening and the rest of the film is about what happened to him afterwards and wether he will get caught. The opening helps set this storyline up as it first explains whats happened and gets the audience involved with the action, it builds up their opinions on the character and then makes them want the male character to be found and punished for his actions. The whole idea of the opening is setting the scene and getting the audience involved with the story line in order to enjoy the film to its full potential.

Genre

The opening uses a lot of dark, chiaroscuro lighting and sinister background music, this all helps to build the atmosphere and tensions needed to a thriller film. 

How the characters are introduced

The girl is the first to be seen, this is when she is running down the railway. Introducing her like this gets the action within the film started straight away and gets the viewer interested from the very beginning, it also introduces her as an endangered character so the audience knows what to expect from the very beginning.

The first time the male character is seen is in the pub at the bar, here he is sat having a pint and is in his work clothes, portraying him like this makes him look like a normal person however the audiences opinion will soon change. 

Evaluation of our shoot

Overall, shooting our production went really well. We started by filming the bar scene in one of our friends pub, although we did encounter a few problems. For instance, the lighting in the pub was too dark to start out with, but we overcame this minor problem by using the disco lights, which also gave the feel that the two girls in the frame were on a night out and it added a bit of life to a once boring shot. We also had the problem of background noise, as there were other people in the pub whilst we were filming so we could hear their conversations and the noise of the television. We over came this problem by deciding to play Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline' as a diegetic sound track, as if it was actually playing at the time.

  

During the second shoot, we went to Holly's house to film the part of the girl running down the railway track, the fall, and the scenes of a mysterious figure with an axe. As it was night time by this point, we faced the problem of there not being enough lighting, so we had to use our own artificial lighting by using head torches. Using the torches was quite inconvenient and difficult as it was hard to make it look like natural lighting and not too staged, but after many attempts we managed to overcome this problem. 

Another problem we faced was preforming a tracking shots as we did not have the equipment to do to readily available to us, after a number of different efforts, we came up with the idea to attach the camera to the tripod, place it in a wheelbarrow, and slowly but carefully move it in the direction we needed. It took a few tries, but we eventually managed to get a smooth shot that we were able to use in the production.

Another problem that we encountered throughout the filming of our production is conflict within the group, because obviously we all had our individual ideas of how things should/needed to be done. After listening to eachothers ideas opinions, we managed to compromise and take each other's opinions into account to avoid any falling out.

Availability was also a reoccurring issue within our group as we found it difficult to agree on a set time when we were all able to meet to film the production, due to illness, holidays and other commitment, so this really limited the time period that we had to film. Due to this, we were left with only three days to film our production, so in reality we were lucky that it all came together as well as it did. 

The final, biggest problem we face was in the editing of our production. We were getting along with the editing very quickly and efficiently however just as we had finished our production somehow deleted and we had to start the editing process all over again, this left us with little time to get the production finished and edited completely again trying to replicate what we had previously done. 

These however were all the problems we faced, i think our production overall went very well and we were lucky to have such good group dynamics that worked together well and different personalities that thrived in different situations. Any problem we had we overcame quickly and in my opinion we did a great job and gained a lot of experience on the way. 

Story Board

This is the story board for our finished production after we made changes to the shot list.

Changes with our production

We used the shot list as an guide to our shoot and followed the shots as we went along however there have been frequent, slight changes to our shots throughout as when we were filming we developed ideas that we thought would be more effective than what was originally planned. 

Characters/Costumes

When filming we encountered a problem with our male character. In the out scene we used a friend to play the male character however when it came to shooting other scenes he was not available so we had to dress Gabby, another member of our group, to play his role instead. Doing this meant that the clothing worn was different and obviously the character were too. In the other scenes we dressed Gabby in dark pants and a dark over sized jumper and coat so her face was concealed and in the darkness you could not tell the difference between the previous character and Gabby. 

Creating our production company logo

Before designing our logo we looked into other film companies in the same industry to gain some insight to what we should be creating. Our film company would create relatively low budget films so the company we choose to co-produce with would have to fit with this category. 

Voltage pictures are a company similar to ours as this is a low budget production company that have created thrillers in the past.

Studio Canal are a big european film production company, the colour scheme and simplicity of their logo helped in the design process of ours. They also co-produced Taken, a 2008 action thriller along with EuropaCorp.

We chose studio canal as a company to co-produce with as Taken is a film similar to ours, the logo also has a similar colour scheme which helps to connote the mood we want, this logo is better suited that the EuropaCorp logo as that creates a happier more peaceful atmosphere as it has many more brighter, happier colours. 

When creating our logo we decided to go for a simple design, a black background with a large white diamond in the middle.

 The name of our company is 'Diamond Productions'.

The only colours we used in the logo, black and white, and binary opposites therefore help to create the underlying sinister theme of our production. Black represents the fear and trauma that takes place in the production and the white represents the the unknown and the naive, innocence of the main girl.

Creating our title image

To create the film logo, we looked at many different film titles to get inspiration for our own. We also created a few different versions of our title image so we could pick out the best parts of the title and combine them to create the image that we wanted.

We liked the titles above as they were very simple yet effective to set the sinister scene of the thriller. The structured use of the writing makes it look tidy and helps create a professional look without much hassle.

The use of the dark colours are also a good quality as black helps to represent the thriller genre and connote the fear and sinister mood within  the opening.

Not only did we look at existing titles but also different backgrounds to accompany the words.

These are some the titles we created incorporating some of these ideas…

Although we liked the examples made above and their simplicity, we decided to go for something less simple and a little more outrageous. 

Looking around online we found a website called 'DaFont' and on here was a number of different style fonts. We found a perfect sinister style font that we could use in our title and then went on to print key the letters from the website and then save them, we removed their white background so we could then incorporate them with a background for our design. To remove the background from the letters we imported them into photoshop and on each letter used the tool 'background eraser tool'.

This is what we produced:

When we imported it into our media production we made further changes to the title, we added some red/orange colours to the background and writing in order to add to the sinister effect as the colour red connotes danger and fear. We also made the title move around the the screen in jumpy motions, again to create a sinister effect. We were inspired to create this type of jumpy image by the titles we had previously seen on se7en.

Prop List

We used a number of different prop's in our filming, first some of the basics:

 Camera

The camera we used to film the footage was a panasnonic, HDC-SD90 full HD.

This was provided to us by sixth form.

Camera Tripod

The tripod we used was a tripod provided by sixth form for us to use in the production.

Lighting

To create the lighting we needed we used small handheld torches, these brought practical advantages such as being small and compact so were easy to use, and also efficiency advantages as they gave off a lot of light at great power.

I provided the torches for lighting.

These are the extra prop's we used in our production:

Tomato ketchup 

This was used in the production to represent fake blood on the girl when she falls and hits her head. We wanted to use ketchup as it was a practice alternative for fake blood and very easy to apply. I provided the ketchup.

Axe

We used the axe as a murder weapon in the final scene of our production. 

I provided the axe.

Behind The Scenes

Whilst we were filming we took some shots of the behind scenes camera work and acting.

When trying to film a tracking shot we noticed the camera was very wobbly, to create a smoother shot we decided to use  wheelbarrow as this was a practical option at the time. 

Group Chat

 In order to keep in touch, keep up to date with filming times and generally talking about our production we created a group chat on Facebook. This allowed us to all talk in one place and made planning to meet up a lot easier.

This shows a conversation during the planning stages of what day we were going to film our production.

Filming Preparations

In the process of choosing what day to film, we had to check the weather to ensure it wasn't raining on the days we wanted to film. 

We needed it to be dark for our outside film so we planned to film around 6pm, therefore we checked the weather for each day at this time of night so we could plan ahead the day we wanted to film and for how long.

Looking at the weather we decided to film on Wednesday at 6 o'clock as this was the only day that was not predicted rain at the time we wanted to film.

Locations for filming the thriller opening

Location

Primary location: 

unused train tracks for the girl to run on. (At the end of Holly’s garden)

-Setting: Dark lighting, at night-time to film it- connotes something bad and encourages the whole scene to feel more ominous and dangerous. Whole of this scene is in the same lighting.

Secondary location: (flashback- black and white) in a pub, (molly’s grandma’s pub). 

-Setting: Light lighting, flickering light above to foreshadow that something bad may   happen. Colorful lights will make it seem happy but the flickering light suggests otherwise

Back to Primary Location: 

Back to original scene reinforces that before was a flashback and we see contact between the killer and the girl

-Setting: Dark lighting again, with strong flashing lights throughout the scene e.g., the car lights, the man’s torch light

Final Scene:

This is in an unused barn at the same location of the train tracks at a member of our group's house. 

-Setting: Chiaroscuro lighting

 

Costume designs for thriller opening

FEMALE CHARACTER

The idea we had for the girl’s clothing was to make her look sophisticated and classy, to make her look like the classic damsel in distress. We chose black clothing as it is simple and gives the sophisticated look.  Her hair is up in a tidy bun again to create her sleek look, representing her respectable character.

In the bar

·         Nice, classy, black dress.

·         High heeled boots

·         Neat and tidy hair, up in a bun.

·         Pink lipstick.

·         Clutch bag.

·         Big, black, fur coat.

Running down the tracks

·         Same dress.

·         Heels in hand.

·         Same big fur coat.

·         No clutch bag.

Makeup

     Her makeup in the bar is very neat and natural with bright pink lipstick and dark eyes, this changes as she is running down the tracks. When she is on the tracks her makeup has smudged to make her look more distressed, she will also have blood on her forehead after she falls over.

MALE CHARACTER

The male character will be dressed in a baggy dark jumper, with baggy dark work pants. We have dressed him to look shabby to create an opposite style than the girl. 

Dressing him shabby makes him look very unappealing and helps build up his antagonist character. His black clothes are used to portray his dark, evil character.

 In the bar

In the bar, the male character will be wearing a baggy dark t-shirt with his baggy work pants.

On the railway tracks

On the tracks in addition to his clothes he will be wearing a baggy dark jumper with its hood up in order to shadow his face.